


The Recruit

by ccgh518



Category: American Assassin (2017), American Assassin (movie), American Assassin - Vince Flynn
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Blood and Gore, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Fights, Fluff and Smut, Guns, Romance, Rough Kissing, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Roughness, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smut, True Love, Violence, just Mitch is a rough guy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2018-11-30 07:22:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 44
Words: 151,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11458794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ccgh518/pseuds/ccgh518
Summary: Mitch Rapp arrives at The Barn to train with Stan Hurley and become a covert assassin for the country's most elite death squad, but ends up falling for a mysterious woman also training at The Barn.Also to be found as Mitch x reader on @were-cheetah-Stiles on tumblr.... anon. -___-





	1. Day 1

"Who is he?" She asked Stan as she walked up next to him, looking out the window at the black SUV that had come to a halt in the driveway. 

"I guess we're about to find out, Willa." Stan said as he walked away away from her and closed the front door behind him. 

She watched as the young man, clad in an unzipped gray hoodie, blue plaid shirt, black t-shirt, blue jeans, shaggy brown hair and light stubble talked calmly to Stan. She shook her head, breaking her concentration on his face, and walked away. 

* * *

 

She heard the hinges on her door creak, as she opened her eyes and glanced over to the tall figure in her doorway. "Hey, Will, we're going out for the circle." The man said before ducking out of her room again. She nodded, swung her legs over the side of her bed and laced her shoes up. 

She watched as Stan lectured to everyone, standing in the middle of the group with the new recruit standing across from him in just his tight black shirt, jeans and boots. 

"Kill me." She heard Stan say calmly as he handed a knife to the young man.

He lunged at Stan with decent technique, but as quickly as he lunged, Stan had pinned him to the ground and pressed the tip of the blade against his throat even quicker. The man looked bewildered and pressed his large hands against Stan's trying to ensure that the knife didn't get any closer. 

Stan backed off, taking his knee from against the new recruit's ribcage, and helped him off the ground. "Why don't you have another go at this... Who against... Willa, get in here." Stan insisted. 

Willa looked up at Stan and the man in black, not moving her head, but simply lifting her eyes. She did not look amused. She blinked a few times, then inhaled and took Stan's place in the circle. She hated when he did this. She was the only woman in the group, not a circus act to be bewildered by. 

Mitch glanced around and saw the smirks on the faces of the guys in the group. He focused his eyes back on her, not fazed by her gender. He stepped forward and watched her remain unflinching. He was puzzled by her lack of movement; she wouldn't even bring her hands up to protect her face. He threw a punch that she caught in her small hand. She pushed his hand back and then dropped her hand back to her side.

She was quick. Mitch threw another punch, which she deflected just by moving. He tried to hit her from the other direction and she backed her head out of the way, then brought her elbow up and hit him on the outside of his face with the outside of her bent arm. He grabbed his face and stumbled backwards. His ear was ringing. He had never been hit like that before. 

He shook his head, trying to get the ringing to stop and put his fists up tighter to his face. He was so busy watching her hazel green eyes, waiting for her to divulge what he next move would be, that he missed her hand press quickly against his chest, followed by her foot hooking against the back of his knee, bringing him down to the ground. She landed on top of him, pulling his arm across his body in a way that felt like it was about to be dislocated from his socket. She stared straight into his warm brown eyes, and released him when she heard Stan clapping. 

She got off of Mitch and looked at Stan as she walked back to her place in the circle. "I hate when you do that." She said quietly as she passed by her mentor.

Stan was smirking, as he passed his protege. "I know." He helped Mitch to his feet. "Maybe one day you'll be as good as her, although it's doubtful, Rapp." Stan patted him on the back and walked away from the group, back towards the house. "Tomorrow at 0700." Stan yelled at the group as he left them in the woods. 

Mitch clutched his shoulder and watched as the short, skinny, long brown haired woman walked back to the house with the group of men. Most of them chatting together, her only chatting with two.

He followed them back and found an empty room to put his medium sized duffle bag in. He caught a glimpse of the person across the hall as the shadow moved across the room. He watched her walk over, a paperback book folded in half in one hand and an apple pressed against her mouth in the other. She pushed the door closed with her foot. He decided to close his too, and he went back to unpacking. 

Later that night, she walked into the bathroom with her toothbrush and a wash cloth and began brushing her teeth. She heard a toilet flush behind her, and saw the new man walk out of the stall, rubbing his shoulder and rotating it in an obvious effort to get it to pop. He paused when he saw her standing in front of one of the many sinks and mirrors. He lowered his arm and walked up to the sink next to hers to wash his hands.

He made a mental study of her in his periphery. Her hair was long and wavy from braids, the same way Katrina's used to be, but was generally pin-straight. She had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, pierced ears, toned arms, and was barely over five feet tall. He examined her frame as she bent over to spit.

She was wearing a tank top with no bra, and long black leggings, with purple socks over her surprisingly large feet. She rubbed the warm, wet cloth against her face, rung it out, and turned off the water. She glanced over at him, unconsciously placing his hand back over his arm, and she walked away. He realized that he had been staring. He shut off the water in front of him and followed her down the hall to his room. He glanced at her door, it was closed, and he closed his behind him. 

Ten minutes later, Mitch heard a light knocking on his door. He got up from his bed and opened it, revealing the woman from across the hall standing in front of him. "Can I come in?" She asked, her voice low but sweet. Mitch stepped out of the way, granting her passage, and closed the door behind her. She glanced around the room, seeing nothing changed since he got there, except the duffel under his bed. "I think I may have dislocated your shoulder a little. I didn't mean to actually do it." She finally said, nodding her head at his arm. 

"It's fine." Mitch said plainly. 

"No, it's not... sit." Mitch complied and sat on the edge of the bed. She walked up to him, pressing the tips of her fingers into his skin, looking for the disconnect. She wrapped her small fingers around his wrist, pushed her other hand against the place where his neck and his shoulder met, and leaned one knee against the bed next to him. 

"Are you going to count?" Mitch asked, knowing what she was about to do.

"Nope." She said as she yanked his arm up and then pushed it down, hearing a small pop, signifying that the joint was back in place. Mitch exhaled loudly and growled. She released her grip on him and stood up in front of him. He rotated his shoulder with ease, and looked up at her watching him. "Better?"

Mitch cracked his neck. "Much. Thanks." 

"You shouldn't thank me. I did it to you in the first place." She always looked like she could crack a smile while she was talking, but never would. "What's your name?" 

"Mitch."

"You got a last name?" She asked, leaning her hand and weight against his dresser. 

"Rapp." 

She nodded, never cracking that smile. The same serious look on her face that he had seen all day. "Willa." She pointed to herself. "I'm sorry about earlier, Mitch." She turned and opened the door. 

"You got a last name?" Mitch echoed her question. 

"Yea." She raised her eyebrow and smiled with her eyes as she walked out the door, closing it behind her. 

Mitch chuckled lightly to himself, shook his head, and laid back on top of his sheets, thinking about the events of that day. 


	2. Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch gets a lesson in tracking and receives a gift.

He pulled a pair of black, tinted safety goggles off the table and raised them over his eyes. Everyone at the gun range paused, and watched Mitch take an AK-47 off the table behind him and begin checking and loading it, wanting to see what the new recruit had to offer in terms of marksmanship. She noticed a white cotton t-shirt sticking out slightly from under both ends of his dark gray, chunky sweater. She noted him wearing a darker pair of jeans than the ones he had on yesterday, and then she realized that she was more focused on how his hair still looked good under his protective headphones, than what he was about to do with the high powered weapon. She heard the automatic rifle go off in small spurts and watched as he hit dead on for his target and the four guys next to his targets. The men murmured around the target range, and then went back to shooting. 

She picked up her Desert Eagle .50 Caliber Handgun and aimed it at his target, from seven rows away. He didn't notice where her gun was pointed, as he aimed a small handgun at the head on his target sheet. Before he could press his finger against the trigger, his target sheet moved. He looked up and saw a new hole, square between the eyes. He looked behind him and saw Stan grinning and leaning against the equipment table. He leaned over the other way and saw her put down her gun and glasses on the table, and raise her eyebrows at him. 

"Can't ever let them get big heads, can you Will?" Stan said as she walked towards the exit. Willa shrugged. Stan patted her on the back as she walked out of target practice. Mitch went back to shooting until the exercise was over. 

At lunch, Mitch glanced around the large dining room for an empty chair. He sat next to the two tall men that he saw walking with Willa the day before. He saw no sign of her though. 

"Mitch, right?" The bulkier one asked, as he moved his food around his plate with his fork. 

Mitch nodded and bit into his sandwich, quickly washing it down with the water in front of him. 

"I'm Rob, this is Julian." The bulkier one said, as he gestured to the man sitting next to Mitch, who nodded his head Mitch's way. 

"What's up, man?" Julian said rhetorically. Mitch nodded back, not entirely interested in making friends and conversation. 

"You really know your way around a gun, man." Rob commented, popping a potato chip into his mouth. 

"Thanks." Mitch said, quickly glancing up from his plate. 

"Not so much around Willa though." Julian chuckled. 

"Nah, don't listen to him. Willa has literally done that to everyone in this room, myself included and I'm like triple her size." Rob explained. "She's been here for almost three years and she is damn good at hand-to-hand." 

"And shooting, apparently." Mitch commented, referring to what had happened that morning. 

"Yea, she's a real treasure." The guy next to Rob commented sarcastically. 

"Shut the fuck up, Dan." Rob defended his friend. The man that Rob referred to as Dan, raised his eyebrows with a smirk and went back to eating his food. 

"RAPP!" Stan yelled, his head sticking out of the door to his office. 

"Seeya." Julian said aloud. 

Mitch nodded at the two men and went to Stan's office. Stan stood next to his desk, his laptop open, and he glanced at Mitch, standing in front of him. "Why are you here, Rapp?"

"To get good enough to kill the Bahi terrorist cell and Mansour." Mitch answered, matter-of-factly. 

"What for? Why do you care about Mansour?" 

"For Katrina.. for revenge." Mitch answered again. 

Stan shook his head. "That kind of shit is going to get you killed, Mitch." 

"It's what's keeping me alive, sir." 

"You think you're special?" Stan asked, as he turned his laptop around to show Mitch a picture of Katrina on his screen. Mitch looked up and glared at Stan. "Never, ever let it get personal." He lectured. "Do you understand, Rapp?" 

"Yes, sir." Mitch said, seething behind his teeth. 

"We meet back in the woods in three hours at 1700 for tracking. Get out." Stan closed his laptop and sat down in his chair. 

Mitch left the office and walked out the front door. He marched straight into the woods and punched the underside of his fist against a pine tree. He growled and punched against the tree again. 

"You'll do more damage if you use your knuckles." 

Mitch looked up, wondering where the voice he just heard was coming from. He saw her leaning up against a tree in a not too far off distance, the same paperback book folded in half in her hand. He walked over and stood over her. 

"To my knuckles or the tree?"

"Both, probably." She smirked at him.

"What are you doing out here?" Mitch asked. 

She shook the book in her hand, and raised her eyebrows at him. 

"Right, sorry to bother you." Mitch said, wondering what she was reading but not feeling engaged enough to ask. He turned and began walking back to the house. 

"No, stay... I'll go." She got up from the forest floor, dusted her jeans off, picked up her jacket and began walking away from Mitch. 

Mitch watched her, confused. "The Barn is the other way." He yelled after her. 

"I know." She turned and flashed a smile so white that it made the hair stand on his arms. She turned back around, hopping on her toes, and disappeared into the trees. 

* * *

 

1700 hours rolled around and everyone was assembled where the circle had taken place yesterday, except for Willa. Mitch noted her absence again. Stan stood in front of the group of nineteen men, and spoke. 

"I've told you what you need to know about tracking a human, so... go find Willa. She's in there with a bag full of the new keys to the front door. You can either retrieve them from her by 2100 hours and get to sleep in your bed, or you can not, and get them from me at 0900 tomorrow morning after target practice, and sleep out here tonight." Stan smirked as the group murmured to each other, and took note of Mitch already checking his surroundings. 

Rob and Julian approached Mitch, who was clutching a black, cable knit sweater in his hand, and looking off in the direction he saw her disappear into earlier in the day. 

"Hey, Mitch, do you wanna come with Julian and I to find her? Work together and get back here sooner?" The six foot six inches bulky man asked. 

"I'm good." Mitch nodded, and pulled the sweater over his head, then went off into the woods on his own.

The sun was setting in an hour and Mitch caught a broken twig on the ground. He bent down and glanced at it, knowing where to go next. At 1745 hours, Mitch found Willa sitting cross legged on a tree stump, deep in the woods, reading her book in the dimming light. She glanced up and shook her head. 

"I am somehow not surprised." She said quietly. 

"What are you reading?" Mitch nodded at her book.

"Casino Royale..." She narrowed her eyes at him, the serious look returning to her face. 

Mitch raised an eyebrow at her and smirked. "You're reading James Bond at a CIA black ops training camp?" 

Willa chuckled, and smiled. "Of course not. I'm fucking with you." She unfolded her book, her pointer finger holding her page, and showed him the blue and yellow cover. 

"The Great Gatsby.." Mitch recognized the cover. 

"For the hundreth time." 

"I've never read it." He confessed, still standing over her staring down. 

"That's a shame. It's a...." Willa stopped talking and looked off into the woods to her right. She heard a voice and snapped her focus back to Mitch. "Take your sweater off." 

"What?" Mitch looked confused.

"Take it off, take it off." She stood on the stump, revealing a ziplock bag of keys behind where she was sitting. Mitch pulled the sweater over his head and she snatched it out of his hands. She shoved her book against his chest, and he held it where his sweater had once been. He watched as she wrapped the bag of metal keys in the sweater, then took off her own jacket and wrapped that around Mitch's sweater. She was wearing black high waisted jeans and a black thermal that clung to her body in all of the right places. 

"What are you doing?" Mitch said aloud. 

"Being tracked." She tucked the fabric wrapped keys under her arm and took off running. Her nimble feet making little to no noise at all. He couldn't hear the keys jingling together either. She had cleverly soundproofed them. She turned around, and looked at Mitch. "Are you coming?" 

Mitch nodded slightly and took off after her. Every few yards, she would pause and cover their tracks, or have Mitch stand still as she backtracked, created a divergent, decoy path, and then made her way back to him. They had been running for twenty minutes straight before she stopped and looked up. She unwrapped the keys and tucked them in her back pocket, a few finally jingling as she handled them. She tied Mitch's sweater around her waist, then slipped her arms through her jacket. He watched as she began scaling the tree in front of her with minimal effort. He watched her foot and hand placements and followed up after her, tucking her book in the waistband of his pants. More than half way up the trunk of the tree, Mitch lost his footing and almost fell. Willa reached down and grabbed his hand. She helped to pull him up onto the high branch that she was perched on. 

She stood on the questionably stable branch and untied Mitch's sweater, handing it to him, and pulled the keys out of her back pocket. "Sorry about that." He pulled the sweater back over his head, and watched as she shoved the bag of keys in her jacket pocket. "Don't let your legs dangle.. the whites on the bottoms of your shoes are a pretty good giveaway. 

Mitch glanced at her. "You're wearing a pink windbreaker." He didn't understand how his shoes were more of a giveaway. 

"Yea, but I'm really good at this." She shrugged, remaining nonchalant about their situation. 

"Why did you run?" 

"I didn't want them to find me yet." She whispered, looking off into the distance of the forest. It was 1830 and it had gotten dark and the temperature had begun to drop. 

"But I found.." She leaned forward and pressed her fingers against his lips. She lost her focus as she felt his warm breath against her skin, and she began to tip off the branch. Mitch caught her wrist and kept her from falling. He began to hear the crunching of leaves beneath feet as well. He pulled her close, tearing the pink coat off her body, placing it in a ball in his lap and pulling him against his body. He wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed his pale face into her hair. They disappeared in their black clothing into the night sky. A man who Mitch recognized as Dan, the guy from lunch earlier, and three other men walked carelessly with the flashlights checking their surroundings. 

Willa breathed heavily into Mitch's chest as the men walked past the tree, not tracking the pair up there. They listened as the footsteps got farther into the distance. Willa shivered as Mitch unwrapped his arms from around her body. He pulled the jacket out from between them and draped it over her shoulders. 

"That was good thinking.." Willa commented.

"It helped that we were both wearing black." Mitch replied with a shrug. He glanced down at his watch. It was only 1900 hours. She had two more hours out here before she could return to the house. 

"We should keep moving. I'm clearly a sitting target with this coat." She dropped the coat with the keys in the pocket onto the ground, wrapped her arms around the branch, and dropped her body over the side, hanging off the tree until she felt comfortable enough to jump. She landed on the ground with a grunt. Mitch followed suit. 

"Why'd we run and hide from Dan and his friends?" Mitch asked quietly as they continued through the expansive woods. 

"It's not supposed to be easy to find me." She replied, glancing up at him, examining the mole that fell just outside of his moustache, on his cheek. 

"You let me find you." Mitch challenged her. 

She stopped, and Mitch turned. "You followed my actual trail that I had been covering for three hours. You found it in forty-five minutes. Not even Stan can do that. I'm not even sure how you did it." She admitted.

"You left a couple of snapped twigs in your path." Mitch said, underplaying the techniques he used to find Willa.

She smirked at Mitch. "Well, that's why I didn't run." 

"So do I get a key?" He asked, as she went back to walking beside him. 

"Do you want it now?" Willa asked. 

"No."

"Yea, you get a key, Mitch." She smiled up at him, letting her guard down for a moment. Mitch let the corner of his mouth turn up to smile back at her. 

They stopped several times and she taught him her techniques to creating dummy trails, covering his tracks, and leaving no trail at all. He could've gone back to the main house to relax at any point, but he was learning from her and enjoying her presence. 

"Willa," Mitch broke the silence and caught her attention. "Why'd you shoot my target this morning?" 

A small corner of Willa's mouth curled up. "You're good with a gun, and you made that clear and I didn't want the other guys to get pissed at you for shooting their targets." Mitch nodded, and looked down at his feet. He didn't know why she felt compelled to protect him, but he didn't mind that compulsion. He had obviously felt it too up in the tree earlier.

"Thanks for showing me all of this. You're really good at it." Mitch said, glancing over at her as they walked through the woods.

"I've been here long enough, if I wasn't good at tracking or being untraceable at this point, that'd be a whole other issue." 

"I heard that you've been here for almost three years." Mitch said, and watched as Willa nodded. "How old are you then?"

"25. You?"

"I'll be 25 in August. So they got you straight out of college?" Mitch wasn't usually this inquisitive about other people's business but she was young like him and he was curious since most of the other trainees did not look to be the same age as them. 

"Stan recruited me himself. Straight out of Columbia."

"You were Ivy League?" 

"Don't sound so surprised." She said to him with a smile. 

"No, I'm just impressed. So are you from New York?" 

"Originally, I moved to D.C. when I was nine though, then moved back up for college, then back down here for this. What about you?"

"From McLean, Virginia, went to a few boarding schools, then I went to Syracuse for college."

"Oh you're big Orange, huh?" She laughed quietly. Mitch smiled softly and nodded. "What'd you go for?"

"International Business and French." 

Willa's eyes perked up. "Parlez-vous francais?" 

Mitch see-sawed his hand back and forth. "I can get by. What'd you go to school for?" 

"I double majored in History and Middle Eastern Studies, and minored in Political Science and Arabic."

"So you speak French and Arabic?" Mitch asked, impressed by her ambition and achievements. 

"And Russian... and I technically took Spanish in like seventh and eighth grade but all I remember is 'where is the bathroom?'" She laughed quietly. 

"You were basically designed for the CIA, what are you still doing at The Barn after almost three years?" Mitch asked. 

Willa shrugged. "I guess I'm still not quite up to par yet." 

Mitch looked at his watch, and he noted that time was up. "Well no one else found you so I think your skills are pretty up to snuff. They're all going to sleep out here tonight?" 

"You were supposed to be out here with them. No one was supposed to find me. I swear, I still don't know how you did." She told him. 

"Do you think Stan is going to think we cheated?" Mitch asked. 

"No, I think Stan really likes you actually. I haven't seen him this excited about a recruit in a while." Mitch raised his eyebrows in response. "We should head in. It's time."

 

* * *

 

 

Mitch and Willa emerged from the woods to see all eighteen men, who had not found her, waiting in front of the main house with Stan. She had given Mitch his key and she had taken one for herself, then she handed the rest to Stan.

"So did he find you like five minutes before?" Stan asked.

" _No, she probably just wants to fuck him._ " Mitch heard the guy who sat next to Rob at lunch that afternoon say to a friend under his breath. They both snickered. 

"No, he found me after forty-five minutes." Willa told Stan, standing up next to him in front of the group.

" _Nah man, they've been together for hours, she already fucked him."_ The friend replied, their snickers becoming more audible. Mitch thought about the ways that he could set them straight, but decided that it probably would just make things worse for Willa.

"You found her in less than an hour?" Stan seemed bewildered. "He found her in less than an hour, what the hell is wrong with the rest of you? What've you been doing the rest of the time?" Stan questioned him, becoming suspicious. 

"Learning, sir." 

"Alright, let's go on up then. Enjoy your evening, gentlemen. See you all at target practice tomorrow at 0700." Stan went up the stairs first, and Willa and Mitch followed. Stan locked the door behind them and said goodnight. 

* * *

 

Mitch grabbed a bite of dinner while Willa showered. He laid back in his bed and felt the book that she had given him hours ago pressing against his back. He pulled it out from his jeans and flipped through the pages, noticing certain lines underlined in pen. He got up out of bed to return the book.

He saw that Willa's door was ajar. He walked in, the room dimly lit by only her desk lamp, and observed all of the books in the bookcase above her desk. They were mostly classic novels and books on mythology and poetry, but there was one that caught his eye: _A Concise History of the Middle East_. He grinned at the fact that she had definitely kept one of her college textbooks. He continued through her room, and saw a picture on her dresser: a little brunette girl with her parents and older brother on the Staten Island Ferry, with the original World Trade Center buildings in the background. The little girl smiled from ear to ear as she hugged onto her brother, her face partially buried into her brothers chest. Mitch looked at her bed, thumbed the soft cover of the book and placed it on her pillow. He shut the door behind him, and went across the hall into his room.

He yanked at his sweater, pausing as his head was inside of it because it smelled like vanilla. It smelled like her. He continued pulling it off of his body, his t-shirt yanking off with it, revealing a very muscular and toned young man. He pulled his trousers and boxer briefs off and wrapped the towel around his waist. He heard her bedroom door open as he turned the water on for the shower. He let the water cascade down his body until he couldn't smell her scent on him anymore. He thought about Katrina, suddenly having a hard time remembering her face as clearly as he had been able to even just yesterday. He rubbed at his eyes and turned off the faucets. He dried off and re-wrapped his towel around his waist. He pulled his wet flip flops off as he stepped out of the tile of the bathroom and onto the hardwood floor that led to his bedroom. 

He saw the light on under the crack of Willa's bedroom door. He closed his behind him and pulled a clean pair of boxer briefs out of his dresser. He pulled them up, snapping the band around his waist, and brought the towel up to run through his long wet hair. The sound of something scraping against the floor caught his attention and he glanced down to see a book being pushed under the crack of his door. He picked up the book and saw it was Willa's copy of The Great Gatsby. 

Mitch opened the door quickly and saw Willa about to close hers. She turned at the sound of his doorknob clicking, and gave him a good once over. Her breath sticking in the back of her throat as she saw the hair on his chest and under his navel, disappearing into his tight boxer briefs that accentuated his bulge perfectly. She examined his veiny muscles and shaggy wet hair, then tried to focus on his sleepy brown eyes. 

"Thanks." He lifted the book in the air. 

"It's my favorite, so I'll need it back when you're done." She told him with a smile. 

Mitch smirked, and nodded his head towards her room. "Did I not see like four copies of it in your bookcase?"

"When I see a copy, I buy it. Like I said, it's my favorite."

Mitch nodded and gripped the book in his hand. "Goodnight."

"Night, Mitch." Willa closed her door. 

Mitch closed his. He shut off all of the lights in his room, and shoved the book under his pillow. He fell asleep with it still clutched in his hand. 


	3. Day 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa spar and have a ~steamy~ moment in a hot tub.

"Mitch, pair up with Willa. Brunski, you're with Reza..." Stan continued pairing the group off for a morning of close combat training. 

"Yea, I bet you're thrilled to have his hands all over you, eh Will?" Dan said quietly as Willa walked towards Mitch on the mat in the gym and Stan walked away. Willa shook her head and rolled her eyes. She didn't even bother engaging with Brunski anymore.

"What's with him?" Mitch asked her quietly. 

"He's trying to compensate for his micropenis." Willa said loud enough for Dan to hear her.

"Whatever, bitch." Dan muttered under his breath.

"How's the book so far?" Willa turned her attention back to Mitch, ignoring Stan's instructions about the training exercise. 

"Good." Mitch told her.

"Good." 

"Alright, begin." Stan said in the background. 

Willa threw a quick right hook that made good contact with Mitch's jaw, throwing him back a couple of steps. Mitch looked up at her with shock. A smirk appeared on her face. Mitch stepped right back up to her, defending his head with his fists, as she hopped around on the balls of her feet throwing jabs. 

"Come on, Rapp. Hit her." Stan yelled from across the room. 

Mitch switched to a southpaw stance, and threw a left handed jab at Willa. She deflected. She was quick and energetic. 

"So you're ambidextrous, huh?" Willa asked. Mitch nodded slightly and threw another punch. This hit her hard in the lip. He paused as he watched her bring her fingers up to her mouth and wipe blood onto her shirt. He split her lip open slightly. The corner of her mouth curled up and she threw her punches; a few landing blows against his jaw and chest. Mitch hesitated.

"I'm fine. Come on." She reassured him.

Mitch threw another punch. This one landed against her stomach. She bent over and brought her tape-wrapped hands down to her abdomen.

"You okay?" Mitch asked, as he approached and put his hand on her back. 

Willa wrapped her arms around Mitch's waist and pushed her weight backwards, flipping Mitch onto the floor to land on his back. Mitch swept her feet from under her with a scissor kick and she landed next to him. 

"Give and take, give and take. Good, good, keep it up." Stan said as he walked past the pair. 

Mitch pulled Willa on top of him and held her arms to her chest. She struggled against him, rocking back and forth against his body, until she finally broke free and rolled away. He scrambled to get back on his feet, but Willa pulled him back to the floor. They wrestled with each other, each taking and losing the upper hand. 

"Come on, I know you're holding back." She whispered, as he rolled on top of her. 

She pushed him off with her feet, hoisting him in the air. She hit him twice with an elbow to the face and shoulder. He grabbed her ankles and rolled backwards. She went flying across the mat, and ended up on her stomach. She turned over onto her back, kicked her feet and butt up into the air, slammed them down and popped back up using the momentum. He got to his feet and began circling around her again. They threw some punches at each other, and he came up behind her, wrapping his arms over hers, trapping her against him. She struggled to get loose, finally able to cross her arms across her chest, under his muscular hold, and pushed him off. He fell back a few steps, charged forward again, wrapped his arms around her waist and took her to the mat, landing her hard on her back.

He wrapped his hands around her throat and began to choke her. She took the bottoms of her hands and wrists and hit him in the elbows and armpits until she hit hard enough that he released. She kneed him in the stomach, causing him to lean back and grip his hand against where she had hit him. She took his momentary vulnerability as an opportunity and wrapped her knees around his neck. She used all the strength she had in her legs and back to push him onto his back. She pushed her knee into his throat and leaned over him. Her hair was falling out of her ponytail, so she ripped the ponytail holder off and her hair cascaded in front of her as she leaned over him. He stared up at her for a moment, struggling to breathe properly, but stuck in the moment of her hair framing her face.

He snapped out of it, put his hands against her ass and back and pushed her over him. She landed on her stomach with her hands on either side of her face. She felt him wrap his hand around her wrist, dig his knee into the small of her back, and pull her arm back behind her. She struggled underneath him. His heart beat fast as he pressed his hand against hers, digging it into the mat. 

"Okay, I give." 

He rolled off of her and saw her turn onto her back, rubbing her wrists in her delicate fingers. Suddenly he saw her foot come flying towards his face. He grabbed her ankle with his hand and pulled her towards him. 

"GOOD! Great job, you too." Stan praised them. "Alright everyone that's it. You have an hour to work out as you want before lunch, and we will meet at 1400 hours for the run. Well done." Stan clapped and then walked out of the gym. 

Mitch still had his long fingers wrapped around her ankle, she was pulled up against him, panting. 

"Show me how to get out of that hold." She demanded. 

Mitch nodded and showed her the two different ways to fight your way out of someone holding your arm behind your back and sitting on top of you. They continued wrestling on the floor after she got the hang of the techniques. Mitch swiped her off her feet by kicking her in the back of the knee. She fell to the mat with a loud grunt, and stayed down. Mitch rushed over, only to be pushed on his back by her. She climbed on top of him and began trying to punch at him. Mitch grabbed her wrists and pulled them to his chest. She struggled to get free. He twisted his legs so that they wrapped around her waist. She couldn't get out even if she wanted, and she didn't. Mitch sat up, his legs still wrapped around her, and forced her underneath him. He panted and stared down at her. Her hair was splayed out around her head and a smile broke across her face. 

"What?" She asked when he wouldn't let her go and wouldn't break eye contact. 

Mitch maintained his grip on her wrists and body. "You're relentless.. that's good." 

"Your ankle is in my back." She said, beginning to laugh. 

"Sorry." Mitch let go and collapsed on the floor next to her. She watched as he pushed his hair back from his sweaty forehead, bringing the bottom of his shirt up to wipe his face. She caught a glimpse of his happy trail and glistening and tensed abs. It made her breathing stagger. She bit her lip, feeling blood gush out from the split that he caused earlier. Mitch glanced over and saw the red blood on her pointer and middle fingers. He watched as she sucked the liquid off of her fingers and began sucking on her lip. He couldn't stop staring at her. 

She bent her head backwards and realized that they were the only two left in the gym. Everyone else had cleared out for lunch. He followed her lead, propping himself up on his elbow and surveying the empty building. She looked over at him and admired the way his pale skin looked when it was red and hot. "Are you hungry?" She asked. Mitch shook his head. Willa paused, and then narrowed her eyes at him, the semblance of a grin resting on her lips. "Do you want to go in the hot tub?" 

Mitch paused, then nodded. Willa popped up to her feet and led him into the pool area, the cement feeling wet and cool against her feet. 

"I don't have my suit." Mitch's voice echoed through the room. 

"Neither do I." Willa said nonchalantly as she raised her shirt above her head. Mitch swallowed hard as he watched the shirt stick to her sweaty body. "Are you going to get in with all your clothes on?" She asked as she shimmied out of her skin tight leggings. 

Mitch shook his head and began disrobing. He watched her walking over to the panel that controlled the temperature and the jets. He left his boxer briefs on and dipped into the oversized jacuzzi. The jets turned on and he watched as she walked down the stairs into the tub. The water worked its way up over her dark blue lacy boyshorts underwear and finally up to her neck, covering her v-cut black sports bra with mesh straps. He stared as she dipped her head under the water and emerged with her hair slicked back. She rested against a jet, sitting on a ledge across from him. 

He kept himself in place by resting his arms against the cement floor surrounding the hot tub. She stared as his biceps involuntarily flexed in their constant efforts to keep him from floating to the middle of the jacuzzi with the jetstream. They stared at each other silently for a while. She closed her eyes, finally relaxing her head against the edge of the tub, and stretched her legs out, wincing as the muscles pulled. He watched as her hands moved under the water and began kneading the muscle behind her knee. 

"Did I hurt you?" He asked, his voice echoing throughout the room again. 

She shook her head and smiled. "Just a cramp. Probably didn't stretch well enough this morning." 

She watched as he slid his way along the ledge and landed next to her. "Here.." Mitch wrapped his long and sinewy fingers around her thigh and knee. He began pressing and massaging his thumbs into her sore muscles. His fingers felt amazing but she couldn't relax. The water had to have been getting hotter, she thought. She bit her lip again, blood oozing out. She watched as little muscles around his arms and chest tensed and flexed as he focused on her leg. "How's that?... Willa?" 

"Good." She whispered. 

"How's your lip?" Mitch inched closer and wiped his wet thumb across her mouth. "It's still bleeding." Mitch frowned and furrowed his brow, staring at Willa as she reached her small hands out of the water, wrapped them around his, pulled his thumb towards her lips and sucked the blood off. Mitch felt his dick twitch as she sucked lightly on his finger. He felt his hand still wrapped up in hers, as he stared at the beautiful and sexy woman in front of him. She slowly let go of his hand and relaxed back onto the ledge. He followed her, fixing his body next to hers. 

"Did I hurt you at all earlier?" 

"Yea, you got my jaw pretty good, and I'm definitely going to feel all of those drops on my back tonight." Mitch told her. 

She got a bashful smile on her face. "Sorry. Is the jacuzzi helping?" 

"Sort of." 

He watched her lick her lips slightly. "Here." She placed her hand on his shoulder and turned him. He looked over his shoulder at her, and felt her leg hook around his waist. He wrapped his hands around her leg, and felt her body close in on his. He looked forward and shut his eyes as he felt her thumbs begin kneading into his back. It felt so good. No one had touched him like that in a long time. He relaxed against her, as her hands moved up to his neck and shoulders. His head dipped back, floating against the water, and his breathing became slow. "Is that better?" She whispered. 

Mitch opened his eyes and turned around. She propelled herself against the wall of the jacuzzi, as she watched him approach her. "Much better. How's your leg?" He wrapped his hand around her knee again and pulled himself in between her thighs. He placed his free hand next to her head, against the wall, feeling the cold cement of the floor against his fingertips. He watched her chest moving up and down in the water, and her hands gripped against the ledge she was sitting on. 

"Better." She licked her lips, ready for him to kiss her, when the timer for the jets ended and the jets turned off. Mitch got snapped out of the steamy moment, and let go of her leg. He looked up at the clock on the wall above the control panel. 

"We should go."

Her heart sunk. She nodded and watched him get out of the jacuzzi, and grab two towels. He slung one over his shoulder, and unwrapped the other for her to walk into. He stepped back when she did. 

"I'm going to head back and change before the run." Mitch told her, as he grabbed his clothes and headed back into the the main part of the gym for the rest of his stuff. She watched as he walked out the door, and felt her knees go weak. 

"Holy shit." 

* * *

 

It was the end of the night. The group had returned from their twenty mile run, she had showered, eaten, and wanted nothing more than to relax. She laid in bed, her body sore and sunk  into her mattress. Her wrist pressed against her forehead and a folded copy of William Goulding's  _Lord of the Flies_ dangled over her head in her other hand. She heard a knock on the door, and watched as Mitch opened it, and walked in, closing it behind him. He had just a t-shirt and boxer briefs on, as he leaned against her dresser. She admired the dark hair on his long legs. She lowered the book to her stomach and waited for him to talk. 

"What book are you reading now?" He walked over and picked up the book, grazing her torso as he wrapped his hand around the pages. "I read this at one of my boarding schools. Piggy and the conch shell, right?" 

Willa nodded as she saw him barely sit on the edge of her bed. He thumbed his way through the pages. "Since you have my favorite book, I figured I'd read my second favorite."

"Oh well then I'm going to need this one too then." He lifted it away from her. She shook her head and smiled. 

"You're such an ass." 

Mitch wet his lips and fought off a grin. He handed her the book back, frowning when he realized he had lost her place. "Sorry."

She shook her head slightly. "It's fine." 

"How's your lip?" He looked at the extra plump pout that he had created on her face. 

"A little fat but it stopped bleeding." 

"I can get you some ice." 

"That's okay." 

"A little bit poutier, but you still look good." Mitch whispered as he pressed his thumb against a bruise on her neck. She winced. "I shouldn't have gone so hard." 

"You're right." She sat up, and he looked at her face with surprise. "You should've gone harder. I know you were still holding back."

"I didn't want to..."

"Hurt me? I don't care. The people we are going to go against in the field will want to hurt me. You holding back doesn't help me to get better or protect myself." She pressed her hand across a developing bruise near his armpit that she knew she had given him. "I don't hold back from you."

Mitch registered the serious look across her face. "Fine, I'll make you a deal." Willa raised an eyebrow. "You keep sharing your books with me, and help me brush up on my French, and we'll go to the gym every night after dinner when we have off, and we'll work on something, whatever you want to work on, and I promise I'll never hold back." 

Willa pressed her tongue against her top left canine and grinned. "I'm getting the real shit end of this deal, huh?" She joked. Mitch's lip curled up into a half smile. 

"I'll see you tomorrow." He grabbed the book from the bed and began walking out of the room. She scurried onto her knees on the mattress. 

"Mitch." She said loudly. 

Mitch turned around and grinned. He tossed the book back to her, she caught it between her hands, and he shut the door behind him.


	4. Day 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan takes the recruits on an on-sight mission in downtown D.C.

Stan stood in the front of the charter bus, his hands gripping the seats next to him, and spoke to the recruits. "We're going to be pulling up to the hotel ballroom in a few minutes. Just a reminder that going undercover is not going to be easy, and we will be stopping the people we see talking to you before they leave to see if they believed your cover story or not. Remember, College of William and Mary is a medium sized university. The graduating class of 2012 was about 2,100 people, so while it's enough for you to get by, these people will probably be able to tell when they don't recognize someone. If you don't know your new identity backwards and forwards, tonight, you get punished back at the Barn. If you don't know your undercover identity in the field, you get killed, so take tonight seriously."

"Are we allowed to use each other to play off of our identities? No one ever goes to these things alone." Rob asked, making a good point. 

"That's true. Most people would not show up to a five year college reunion alone, but I don't advise this unless you know enough about someone else's identity to not expose them as a fraud, and in doing that, yourself as a fraud."

Mitch watched from behind, through the crack in between the seats as Rob turned to Willa and stuck out his hand for her to shake. "Nice to meet you, I'm Will Peterson and I'm from New York City." Rob grinned and Mitch smirked, and snickered to himself.

Willa stared at Rob with a deadpan expression, and left his hand still floating in the air. "......you stole my identity and made me a man?" Rob nodded vigorously. Willa rolled her eyes and shook Rob's hand. "Fine. I'm Maggie Sheffield and I'm from Portland, Oregon. I swear, I think I once sat next to you at a football game at Zable Stadium." 

"This is going to be awesome." Rob was overly excited.

* * *

 

Willa walked in and immediately ordered a microbrew craft beer, then sat down at the bar. She was wearing black suede thigh-high boots with a tall, chunky heel, with a short cream colored dress that hugged her body and showed off her toned figure. She sipped the bitter, hoppy beverage and sucked at her teeth. She hated hoppy beer. 

Willa glanced at the end of the bar and saw three guys huddled around eyeing her. She pressed her tongue between her lips. "Hey, can I ask you a quick favor?" She got the bartender's attention. He turned back around and grinned, happy that the beautiful girl had stuck around instead of leaving the bar to mingle with the other alumni. "Can you wait until those guys aren't paying attention and pour out half of my beer, then put it back?" 

The bartender glanced over at the guys and looked back at Willa. "You trying to get them to buy you a drink?"

"Kind of.. The middle one is cute." 

"You know it's an open bar, right?" 

"I know." Willa smirked. 

The bartender stepped back and eyed her up and down. "Yea, I'd buy you a drink at a free bar because of that dress too.." 

Willa playfully bit the tip of her thumb and smiled. She knew how to play up the flirtation and get a guy to notice her. The bartender sneakily did as she asked and she took another sip, making eye contact with the one in the middle, as she licked her lips and placed her glass back down. She checked the delicate rose gold watch on her wrist, and fiddled with her hair, twirling it around her finger. 

"Hey, can we get you another drink?" Willa smirked as she heard the voice of one of the men who had walked over with his buddies from the other end of the bar. She had succeeded in seducing them over to her. 

Willa turned and gave her most devastating smile to the three men hovering next to her seat. "I would love that. Thank you. I can't seem to get his attention."

"I don't know how that's possible with you in those boots but I guess he didn't see you walk in like we did. HEY, bartender! We'll have another round and some shots of tequila." One of the guys yelled obnoxiously. Willa faked flattery and a giggle, and looked for the bartender. She caught Mitch leaning against the bar directly behind her, waiting for the bartender to take care of his other customers, and glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "I'm Brian, and this is Zach and Andy." The guy in the middle made introductions, as Willa flirtatiously shook their hands. They did their shots and continued talking. 

"Wait, no way, what semester did you take European Lit. with Mr. Moore?" Willa asked Brian, leaning in to let him get an eyeful of her cleavage.

"Spring semester, Sophomore year. I know you were in that class. I remember you." Brian told her, buying the story that she had pawned off on them. 

"Oh my god, I was absolutely in that class... what was that one book we read that was just awful? Ugh, I can't remember the name... it had that guy.."

"Beowulf!" Brian shouted drunkenly.

Willa paused for a half second, hearing Mitch snicker behind her. "That was it! God, that was such a stupid book..." She laughed and took a sip of her drink, watching the three men talking in front of her about their careers and other things that she couldn't care less about. She heard Mitch's voice behind her. 

"Steven Greene, nice to meet you." Mitch said in his low, husky tone.

"My friend and I were saying that you had to be someone's date because we definitely would have remembered someone as gorgeous as you at graduation." The woman speaking to Mitch giggled drunkenly.

"Ah yea, I've lost some weight since graduation, but uh what are both of your names?" The women fawned over him, divulging their life stories. "Oh wow, I'm from Bethlehem." Mitch told one of them. 

"You're from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania?! NO WAY. I grew up in Allentown. That's amazing. What high school did you go to?" The woman named Stacey Stanzione pushed her hand against Mitch's shoulder causing Mitch to lean back against Willa. She kicked him lightly under the bar and Mitch grinned. 

"I went to Freedom High School, all my friends went to Liberty though." Mitch explained. 

"That's so funny, I knew a couple of kids at Freedom. Did you know Matthew Yeisman or Sarah Keller?" The woman drunkenly babbled.

Mitch shook his head. "The names sound familiar but it was so long ago now..." He shrugged.

The more sober woman interjected and asked Mitch what he did professionally since college. "Well, my freshman roommate and I, we moved up to New York together after graduation and both work at Morgan Stanley now on Wall Street." Mitch answered confidently. "Oh, we lived in Yates Hall." Mitch answered the woman who was trying to find common ground through his freshman dorm hall.

Willa was forced to cease eavesdropping on Mitch's conversation when she heard her cover's name. "Maggie.. Maggie, I asked if you want to dance?" Brian asked her, putting his hand on her knee. Willa thought about the ways in which she could break his fingers. 

She smiled. "I'm sorry, I'd love to. But I have to use the ladies room really quick. I'll be right back. Order me another drink!" She shouted as she walked away. 

Willa walked through the room looking for Rob and Julian. She wondered how they were making out. She saw Rob standing next to a group of four women who all looked annoyed and bored. She grabbed an hor d'oeuvres off a moving tray and popped it in her mouth, and got close enough to hear what the girl in the blue pantsuit was saying to Rob. "I seriously don't think you were in my women's studies class junior year. There were three guys in that class and I would've remembered one as gigantic as you." Willa watched as one of the women whispered to her friend about Rob. "This guy clearly didn't go here, he is so clueless. I wonder what poor bitch brought him as a date just for him to hit on Katie."

Willa decided to intervene on her friend's behalf. She ran up to Rob and patted him on the arm. "Will? Will Peterson? Oh my god, I haven't seen you since graduation! How are you?" 

Rob looked stunned. "Maggie! Maggie Sheffield, how are you?" Willa hugged the large man. 

"I'm sorry, ladies. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just, I had to. I took a Women's Studies class with Will here in Senior year and for a guy, he was so insightful. He wrote a paper about misogyny that our professor literally read out loud to the class because it was so thoughtful." Willa was disarming. The women all relaxed and began chatting to the two undercover trainees. "Ugh, I always wished I was in Yates Hall. My freshman dorm was so boring." One of the women asked Willa a question that she knew that she couldn't answer without getting caught, but Willa was quick on her feet. "Oh my god, wait.. wait.." She giggled and grabbed the arm of one of the women in front of her. "I LOVE this song... Do you guys want to dance?" 

Willa knew that the women wanted to get away from Rob. He hadn't blown his cover but he was terrible with women, and generally came off as too strong due to his eagerness. The women all agreed and began skipping and stumbling to the dance floor. "See you later Will." Willa grinned back at her friend. She danced with her new group of girlfriends to Bruno Mars' " _Uptown Funk"_. 

Mitch had finally shaken the two women from earlier and was talking to a group of guys about finance and the economy. He had fully convinced them all that he was in their business fraternity with them and was networking with one of them about trying to get the guy a job that didn't actually exist at Morgan Stanley with Mitch. Mitch caught a glimpse of Willa shaking and gyrating on the dance floor and suddenly found himself unable to look away. He watched as she dropped to the floor, her legs looking long and sleek in her tall boots, and her body looking tight as she shimmied her way back up. He was mesmerized by the way her face lit up with a genuine smile as she danced to a song that she clearly, actually liked. He was taken aback at how sexy she was and how hard he was finding it to focus on his conversation. Mitch was snapped back to reality when one of the men patted Mitch on the shoulder and invited him to their pick-up football game on campus the following afternoon. Mitch agreed and exchanged fake information, then excused himself to get another drink.

Mitch leaned against the bar, one leg on the stool and one foot touching the floor, and waited for the bartender to make his rounds. A woman leaned next to him and smiled. Mitch nodded politely and went back to waiting for the bartender. 

"Hi, I'm Alicia." She stuck out her hand to shake Mitch's. "So who are you here with? I don't remember you from the class photo." 

"Steven Greene." Mitch shook her hand. "I came alone tonight, just wanted to meet up with some old buddies from the business fraternity and get a free drink, you know?" Mitch put on his most charming and unassuming smile. 

The woman blushed but persisted. "You were in the business school? I just... I don't know, I don't mean to be forward, but you are so handsome, I really feel like I would've remembered you. What dorm did you live in Freshman year?" She asked.

"Yates. What about you?"

"I lived in Yates too. I... I am stunned, I really don't remember y-"

"Hey babe, I was looking for you everywhere." Willa cut the woman off mid-sentence, hooked her arm around Mitch's and pressed her body against his. Mitch felt a surge of energy rush through his body as she leaned against him. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I sent him over here forever ago for our drinks." Willa leaned over the bar and Mitch's lap and caught the bartender's attention. "Hi, can I get a champagne, a whiskey neat, and whatever she's having." Willa flashed her most dazzling smile at the woman. 

"A Chardonnay please." Alicia told the bartender. "Thank you, I couldn't get a drink in to save my life." She nodded at Willa. 

"I'm sorry, I'm being so rude. My name is Maggie Sheffield, I didn't catch yours." 

"Alicia Hardwick." The woman shook Willa's hand. "I was just talking to Steven here about how we both lived in the same dorm Freshman year, but I don't quite remember him." The woman sounded suspicious. 

"Oh my god, you lived in Yates Hall too? Ugh, I really love that building. It's where Mitch and I first met. Oh my god, it was the cutest story, wasn't it, Steve?" She looked up at him and Mitch nodded. The bartender brought their drinks over and Mitch handed it to Willa and Alicia. "Thanks, babe. So anyway, isn't this funny? I was talking to my friend over there. Rosemary? She's dancing with Katie Myers, Lindsay Orly and Jen Smith?" Willa pointed to the group of women that she had been chatting and dancing with, and the suspicious Alicia craned her neck to see. 

"Oh, I think I remember Rosemary, she lived on the second floor, right?" Alicia tested Willa. 

"Actually, I think it was the third floor. Right, babe?" She looked up at Mitch, and he nodded. Willa leaned back against Mitch's chest, and he wrapped an arm around her, as she continued trying to convince this woman that Mitch had lived in her Freshman dorm. "Anyway, I was in Rosemary's room borrowing notes for a class, and Mitch and her were friendly and he popped his head in to borrow something from her."

"Toothpaste... It was pretty late." Mitch added, trying to help Willa out from doing all of the heavy lifting. 

"Yea..." She smiled up at Mitch and snuggled hard against him. Mitch's breath hitched in the back of his throat. "Anyway, it was late and Rosemary introduced Steve and I, and Steve was like, 'it's not safe to walk back to your dorm alone this time of night.'" Willa made a mocking voice. "Even though I just lived over in the Green and Gold Village." Willa laughed. "But I thought he was cute, a little chubbier back then, but god we all had some baby fat still, am I right?" She laughed and lightly tapped Alicia on the shoulder. "So anyway, he walked me back to my dorm, and seven years later, we're still together." She smiled up at Mitch, then looked back at Alicia. "I'm so sorry, you didn't even remotely want to hear that story, it's just fun getting to tell it to people we went to school with who get how silly it was that Steve was trying to convince me that it was unsafe to walk from Yates to Green and Gold at 11 on a Tuesday night."

"No, no... I'm sorry. I was giving Steve the third degree before because I didn't remember him. We had some party crashers thrown out earlier and I thought he was a straggler because I didn't remember him, but I think I actually remember seeing you hanging out together in the Yates common room now. I'm just being an alarmist. I feel so bad. I'm so sorry, Steve." Alicia apologized profusely.

"It's totally fine. I get it. It's hard to remember everyone from our class. I mean, 2,000 doesn't seem that big in theory, but throw a few new beards, a few extra pounds and five years, and..." Mitch told her, taking a sip from his whiskey.

* * *

 

 

Mitch had knocked on Willa's door, but no one answered. He couldn't get the image of her dancing in that tight cream colored dress out of his head, so he went down to the hotel lounge for a drink. He spotted Willa curled up on a couch in the corner of the bar and lounge, light and dreamy piano music playing for the light night crowd. She had a piece of chocolate cake on the arm of the sofa, a fork in hand, a half drunk glass of champagne on the table next to her, and  _Lord of the Flies_  folded up in front of her face. She was wearing a blue and red, oversized flannel shirt, black leggings and her moccasins sat on the floor, as her bare feet were tucked under her. Mitch ordered a whiskey neat and sat down on the loveseat next to Willa.

Willa grinned. Mitch still had his well-fitted navy blue dress pants on with a crisp white shirt still perfectly tucked in, his mahogany wingtips still perfectly polished and clean. "Well, hey there, Steven Greene. Fancy seeing you here." Willa said, placing her book and fork down and picking her drink up to her still perfectly done lips. Her hair still cascaded with natural looking curls and her eyeliner was still in place without a smudge. 

She watched as Mitch pressed the clear glass tumbler to his lips and sipped his nightcap. "I think Willa suits you better."

"Well technically, that's not even actually my name either." 

"How much of a spy are you already?" Mitch joked, the alcohol made him much looser than he normally was.

Willa smiled, and turned more of her body towards him.. her knee touching his leg, and neither of them moving away. "Not a spy, just a nickname. It's short for Wilhelmina." 

"That suits you too, act.." Mitch was cut off from one of the guys that hit on Willa earlier in the night. 

"Maggie.. hey, I've been looking for you all night. It's Brian, from earlier. You know, I can ask the old guy to play something a little bit more upbeat since you still owe me that dance." The man slurred his speech as he ignored Mitch's presence. Brian's friends looked on from the bar, shaking their heads. A few of the other recruits who were also at the bar watched and waited to see what Mitch would do.

"Hey man, I'm Steve, and I think you should probably get some water... hit the hay." Mitch interjected.

"I'm not talking to you, bro. I'm talking to Maggie."

Mitch stood up. "I'd prefer if you didn't since Maggie is my fiancee." Willa quickly grabbed Mitch's arm with her left hand, obstructing the view of her bare ring finger.

"Steve, sit down, it's okay." Willa fake begged him.

"Nah, bro, why don't you come tell me to get lost to my face!" The man was belligerent, but Mitch leaned forward anyway. You could easily tell that Mitch was ripped through his tight, white shirt and his stature. Brian's friends came to quickly collect their drunk friend, apologized and dragged him upstairs. 

"Oh Steve, thank god for you. I would've hated having to sleep with that guy just to keep my cover in tact." Mitch narrowed his eyes at her, he could hear the sarcasm in her voice. He chuckled and shook his head, sitting back down next to her, and picking his drink back up to take another sip. 

"You really saved my ass earlier."

"Actually, Maggie saved your ass." Willa joked. 

Mitch frowned. "Don't undersell yourself. I was watching you all night. You even had me convinced at times that you actually did graduate with those people." Willa's heart skipped a beat when she heard Mitch say that he had been watching her all night. She had caught him watching her dance earlier that evening and while tipsy, decided to put on a bit of a show for him. She was pleased that he had noticed.

"Thanks.. it's not a big deal though, honestly. It's really just getting your foot in the door and getting them talking. People love to spill their life stories to anyone who will really listen at these sorts of things." 

"I'll remember that for next time." Mitch told her. "So where'd you come up with your alias?" 

"Maggie was the name of my dog growing up, and the rest of the story is literally just my cousin Francine Sheffield, she's from Portland, we kind of look alike, she has an interesting enough backstory but is still far enough away that..." Willa shrugged her hands. Mitch understood. "Who's Steven Greene, millionaire financial genius?" She asked.

"My brother." 

Willa looked surprised. "I didn't know you had a brother.. with a different last name then you?"

Mitch laughed, the whiskey really loosening him up. "Well my brother is Steven, and he is doing really well for himself on Wall Street, but the Greene part is just cause Steve loved Rachel Green on  _Friends_ growing up, and I don't know, it was just one of those things that I thought of when I was trying to find a good fake last name."

"Do you miss your family?" Willa asked, leaning closer to hear him over the piano music. She rested her head on the back of the couch, close enough to him that if he bent down, he could feel if her lips were as soft and pillowy as they looked. He had to fight the drunken compulsion not to. 

He thought about telling Willa a lie about his family, as not to ruin the mood, but decided he didn't want to lie to her. "I do miss my brother. He's a great guy. But, umm..." Mitch pursed his lips. "My parents died in a car crash when I was fourteen. So I guess I miss them too." He chuckled once to himself. 

Willa's heart sunk. She pressed her hand against Mitch's knee and rubbed it. "I'm so sorry, that's devastating..." Mitch shrugged. He was distracted by her touch. "I guess that explains the boarding schools then."

A smile curled in the corner of his mouth. "You really do listen to people when they talk." 

Willa decided to use the alcohol in her system as an excuse to be brazen. "Well, I listen to you at least.... I like talking to you. It's easy and you're interesting."

Mitch downed the rest of his drink, catching the bartender's attention and signaling for another round. He turned back to Willa, running his long fingers over the back of her hand. "I like talking to you." 

His words sent shivers down her spine and she blushed. The bartender brought over their fresh drinks and interrupted their moment. Mitch looked at Willa and snapped back to reality. This wasn't a vacation, it wasn't a chance to connect with someone else. This was training to get revenge for Katrina. Mitch downed his drink and stood up. 

"I'm gonna turn in. Can I walk you up?" He asked, fidgeting with the watch on his wrist. 

Willa nodded, downed her own drink, slipped her shoes on her feet, grabbed her book and followed him to the elevator bank in the lobby. They turned as they heard a large group come in from the hotel ballroom, the reunion still raging on. One of the women that had flirted with Mitch earlier saw him as the group walked towards the elevators. 

"Oh my god, Steve! We're all heading up to the pool, you should come!" She drunkenly slurred as Mitch, Willa, herself, and her group piled into the elevator.

"I'm good." Mitch told her, not looking up, but instead staring down in Willa's hazel green eyes. Willa got pressed up against Mitch as the group shoved themselves into the elevator. He wrapped his arms around her again, like he had earlier that night, but better because he could see her face this time. He stared at the small freckles on her nose and cheeks and her long eyelashes. "Excuse us." Mitch said as the elevator stopped on his and Willa's floor, and he guided her out, his hand resting against the small of her back. He walked down the hall with her, his hand still pressed against her body, until they made it to her door. 

He watched as she dipped the keycard into her door and the green light unlocked it. She turned the handle and pushed it open slightly. She turned and looked up at him. "Do you want to come in?" She whispered.

Mitch nodded, his heart racing fast as he accepted her invitation. The alcohol was dampening his guilt, and he couldn't deny how much he wanted her. As he stepped into her room, he heard a latch click on the door next to Willa's and saw Rob and Julian walk out of their room. "Hey Mitch! Want to come down to the bar with Julian and I?" Rob bellowed.

"Dude..." Julian elbowed Rob. He understood that that wasn't Mitch's room and that it was late.

"What?" Rob was oblivious. 

Mitch looked down at Willa. This wasn't right. Neither of them were sober. His face became somber. He took his hand off of her waist and placed it in his pocket. "Goodnight, Willa."

"Goodnight." She said as she closed her door. 

"Nah, man. I was just walking Willa back from down there. I'm gonna go head back to my room and go to bed." Mitch told the two men. 

Mitch dipped his keycard into the lock on his door and heard it click. He turned the handle and paused. He thought about going back to Willa's room and seeing her. He shook his head. "Just go to bed, Mitch." He muttered to himself as he closed the door behind him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to give props to Quantico for letting me steal the idea of the training exercise for this chapter. I don't remember exactly how they did it on the show but I definitely stole the making up a cover exercise from them. Credit given where credit is due. 
> 
> also, writing about spies is hard considering i am not a spy... idk why i thought this would be a good idea.


	5. Day 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch returns from the Ghost camp and has a run in with Willa that changes the nature of his relationship with her, and sets them on a path that they cannot come back from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for sexual assault and attempted rape.

The morning of Day 16, Mitch was whisked away to an underground bunker away from The Barn to begin his real training in Stan's Ghost Protocol Program for the Orion Team. He spent two days in a dark basement with other men and women that he didn't know, wearing virtual reality googles, and expertly completing his tasks. He excelled on every level and at every test. They gave him aptitude, IQ and logic tests, had a psychiatrist evaluate him, ran physicals and stress tests. All which he passed with flying colors.

The afternoon of Day 19, Mitch was walking back from lunch and was hooded. Mitch took down the two guys with ease, and pulled the black shroud from over his face. 

"You know, how I know that he's not cut out for this shit, Irene? He shouldn't have even allowed them to hood him in the first place. He should've sensed them behind him." Stan said, watching the abduction try to take place over a closed circuit TV. 

Irene watched as three more men, and one of the ones that Mitch had already put down, fought with the young man in hand-to-hand combat, finally subduing him. She rolled the tape back and watched the encounter over again. She paused the recording at the moment the first two men entered the hallway behind Mitch. "Look..." She pointed at the tilt of his head. "He knew they were there." Stan leaned forward as she played the rest of the tape again. 

"He let them take him."

"He's ready, Stan."

"He's not ready, but he will be." Stan told Irene, as he walked out the door and slipped into a room across the hall, where a hooded Mitch sat, tied to a metal chair being waterboarded.

* * *

 

The evening of Day 19, Mitch was returned back to The Barn, where more intense training began. The group of twenty, under Stan's supervision, spent ten hours each day learning interrogation techniques, tradecraft, the deadliest aspects of all hand-to-hand combat styles and marksmanship. 

On Day 20, Mitch woke up to the sound of a loud thud against his door. He immediately got up and opened it, to see Dan's body splayed about on the ground, blood coming from his lip, and Willa, who he hadn't seen in days, standing in her doorway with her chest heaving. 

"Don't ever fucking do that again." She warned him, seething through her words. She closed the door and Mitch looked down at Dan, getting to his feet and staring at Mitch. 

"What the fuck do you want?" Dan touched his fat lip and stumbled away down the hall. 

Mitch knocked on Willa's door and then opened it. He surveyed the room: her desk chair had been knocked over, her sheets were next to her bed, broken glass and a lamp were on the floor. There had obviously been a struggle. Mitch saw her, standing next to her closet, without a shirt, her toned back only covered by her long, brown hair. She pulled a sports bra on over her head and turned to see Mitch watching her. He caught the underside of her breasts as she turned, still pulling the fabric over her chest. 

"What?" The same serious look sat permanent on her face. The one he saw the first day he met her. She ripped a navy blue sweater off a hanger in her closet and pulled it on over her head. She lifted her hands to her neck, untucking her hair from inside the sweater. "You should get dressed. We have gun range at 0600." She told him, grabbing her sheets off of the floor. 

Mitch turned around and walked back into his room, hearing her door slam behind him. His stomach turned at the scenarios that he ran in his head over what could've happened in that room. He felt jealous, anxious, angry, angry, angry... The anger always stuck with him. He had only been gone for three days, what could have happened between her and Dan in that time. He pulled a pair of gray trousers on over his boxer briefs, and grabbed a a white shirt and a maroon flannel. He laced up his brown leather boots, tucking his trousers back over the tops, and walked to the gun range. 

Willa was already there, a Glock in her hand, hitting every kill zone on her target. Her gun jammed and she slammed it with the base of her palm. Mitch watched as she aggressively, but efficiently, got her firearm working again, reloaded it, and shot six more rounds into the paper cutout, all hitting the outline of a target square in the face. Mitch caught Dan glaring at Willa and whispering to his friends, and he looked down at his own gun. He placed it on the table, and walked over to her.

"Willa.."

"No." She said as she turned her head to look at him behind her. She went back to shooting.

Mitch walked back to the equipment table that Stan was leaning against, picked up a sniper rifle and checked the gun. 

Stan smirked, and pointed to the exit on the other side of the gun range. "Take Russells with you... RUSSELLS." The large man that Mitch only knew as Rob up to that point turned at his name. He jogged over to Mitch and Stan, and nodded as he saw the rifle in Mitch's hand. 

Mitch was crouched over the rifle, his eyelashes fluttering against the scope, as he got his target in his sights. The sniper range was set up in the woods next to the regular gun range, and all of the targets were at different levels on trees. Mitch lined up his shot and then had a flash of memory back to that morning of seeing glass shattered on the floor of Willa's bedroom. He exhaled and pulled the trigger. He heard it zing through the trees and miss his target. 

"Huh.." Rob said quietly, surprised by the mistake. 

Mitch squeezed at the base of the gun, frustrated. He was distracted. He glanced up at Rob, who was crouched on the balls of his feet, still towering, next to Mitch. 

"What's the deal with Dan?" 

"Brunski? He's a jackass." Rob didn't understand the specificity in the undertone of Mitch's question. 

"What's going on with him and Willa?" Mitch asked more blatantly. 

Rob nodded and sat down on the dirt next to Mitch. "After Dan found out that you were the only one who found Willa during the tracking exercise, and he and everyone else had to sleep out here, he was pissed. He called her out for favoritism. He said some other stuff. I don't know, Stan ignored it and Willa brushed him off like she always does."

Mitch nodded, but that didn't really answer his question. He tried to clear his mind of the scene he had happened upon that morning, but every time he did, all he saw was her shoulder blades moving under he taught, pale skin, and her silky hair grazing the waistline of her jeans, as she pulled her bra over her head. His breathing would become heavy every time the picture popped in his head. He tried to remember what Katrina's blonde hair looked like as it draped over her back, and he couldn't remember it with the same specificity. He grew angry, exhaled, pulled the trigger, and hit his target. A perfect bullseye on each target until he ran out of ammo.

"I guess you needed to just get used to the gun." Rob said as he lowered his binoculars, seeing that Mitch had hit his last target. 

"Guess so." Mitch glanced at his watch. "We have that ten mile run." 

"Oh shit, yea, I need to change." Rob said, getting to his feet.

* * *

 

Mitch walked out to where the group always met in the circle, in the clearing in the woods. He had laced his running shoes tightly against his feet and thrown a baggy sweatshirt and drawstring basketball shorts on. He examined Willa, who was stretching, her sweatshirt bunching up and revealing her protruding hip bones, as she bent over to touch her toes. Her ass was taught in the tight, dark gray leggings that hugged her figure. He glanced around the group, wondering if the other guys stared at her the way he did. Some did, some didn't. Jealousy and unadulterated rage filled his body again and he clenched his fists closed. Mitch breathed deeply, and was pulled out of his trance by the sound of Stan's voice. 

"It's fifteen miles, and honestly, I'm just in that kind of mood today... The last person back is clearly not cut out for the rigors of my training program, so they'll be gone. Run hard." Stan walked back towards the house and the group took off on the trail. Willa stayed in the middle of the pack and Mitch stayed a length behind her, pacing himself. He heard Dan and his three goonish friends loudly whispering behind him, and glanced back at them.

In the thirteenth mile, Mitch decided he would begin making his moves to the front of the pack. He passed Willa and saw the same serious look on her face as she stared ahead. The only people behind him were Willa and the three men with Dan. He realized that he no longer heard her feet, or any feet behind him. 

"GET OFF ME." She grunted. 

Mitch's head whipped around and saw Willa struggling against two of the larger men in the group, as they carried her behind a tree. He ran back and swept the feet out from under Dan, pinned him to the ground with his knee against Dan's windpipe. "Let her go." He said in a raspy tone. The big one dropped her, and the smaller one followed suit. 

"No." Dan strained under Mitch's concentrated weight. 

Willa turned around and kneed up into the big one's crotch three times with great force, her hands bracing against his shoulders in order to get momentum. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Collins." She said in between. The other guys cringed and she went after them. She used the same move that she used on Mitch the first day, except this was a combo that he had been taught in the underground bunker: a swift elbow up to the chin, and then an elbow to the ear, causing a very disorienting ringing in his head. The middle sized one went down just as hard as Collins. 

Dan struggled and tried to break free and Mitch pressed his knee harder into his throat, cutting off his airway. He choked under Mitch's weight. Willa made a roundhouse kick to the smaller one's head, and he went down like a sack of potatoes. She approached Mitch and Dan, fire raging behind her otherwise sweet green eyes. She pushed Mitch off of Dan, and placed her hand where Mitch's knee had been. Dan gasped for air. 

"I told you this morning, don't ever fucking come for me again." She elbowed him in the stomach with great force and got up. He writhed in pain on the ground with his friends, and Mitch watched Willa take off. He ran after her, his long legs somehow struggling to catch up with her. She was lightning fast. He grabbed her arm, stopping her as she darted through the trees, cutting away from the path. 

"WILLA!" Mitch yelled as she struggled to escape his grip. Her body was fatigued and she submitted to his hands. She shook as adrenaline coursed through her body. He placed one on each side of her shoulders, sweeping the now messy braid that she had done after target practice, off her shoulder. "What the hell was that?" 

"You shouldn't have gotten involved, Mitch." She let no emotion come through her facial expressions.

"They were attacking you..." 

"I had it handled!" She shouted, struggling under his grip. 

Mitch let her go, raising his hands up in the air, and watched as she ran off. She paused about ten yards away from him. 

"Mitch, come on." She said in a kinder tone. Mitch ran after her, trampling the ferns and twigs under their feet, taking a short cut back to the house. They emerged back in the dirt driveway of the house. Mitch counted sixteen including Willa and himself; they weren't last and they were safe from being cut. He glanced over at her and she was thumbing a rip in the neck hole of her shirt, clear evidence of what had happened. She didn't say a word.

Seven minutes later, Dan Brunski, the tall one, who Willa called "Collins", and the medium built one emerged from the woods. The smaller man was not with them. 

"Well, I guess that's that for Brian." Stan said as he clapped his hands. "Go inside and eat." Willa hung back and whispered something to Stan, then walked inside. Mitch followed her, passing by Stan in time to hear him direct two of the trainers into the woods. "Go find Keller. Willa said he tripped by the old Sequoia." Mitch turned his head as he followed Willa up the stairs, and watched as the trainers went running off into the forest. 

Willa sat at one end of the table with Rob and Julian, listening to them talk and moving her food around on the plate with her fork. She was fixated on Dan and his friends sitting in the middle of the long table, whispering. Mitch sat at an empty slot on the bench at the other end of the table, eating his lunch and watching the other recruits at the table wondering just what the fuck was going on in this place. 

The dining room cleared out at around 1400 hours for counterintelligence class. Mitch kept an eye focused on the four people involved in the scuffle in the woods that morning: Willa, Dan, Collins and the man who's name Mitch was determined to learn. They were released from class and headed off to dinner. Willa slipped away and headed out the front door, unnoticed by everyone but Mitch. He headed to his room, trying to relax and read the book that Willa had leant him. He couldn't get her face out of his head. 

He got up and slipped into the gear he had on earlier for running, and slipped out the front, headed to the detached gym housed in a repurposed slaughter house next to the main house. He saw a few guys running on the treadmills, and the guy he sat next to at dinner that night was on the rowing machine. He grabbed a towel and the boxing tape from the case by the front doors. He began taping up his knuckles as he walked to the corner of the gym where the punching bags were. He was angry with himself. The woman that he had asked to marry him, had only died a year and a half before, and he was already forgetting her face, already consumed with thoughts about another woman. He needed to let out some aggression. He heard grunts and hard blows ahead of him, and peeked his head around the corner to see Willa landing kicks against the head of a sparring dummy. 

Mitch paused. She was exactly who he was trying to work out of his head. He scratched at the stubble on his cheek and decided to step into the section where she was anyway. They didn't have to talk. She barely acknowledged his presence as he stepped up to the bag. He began with short and swift jabs against the bag. The chains rattling above him as he hit it. They both worked out around each other. Until Willa leaned over, placing her hands on her knees and panting. 

Mitch walked over, squirting the contents of his water bottle into his mouth and setting it down on the padded floors below him. "You know, if you rotate your hips more, you'll exude a lot less energy and also get a much more powerful kick in." Willa glanced up at him, leaning against the sparring dummy's armless shoulder.

"How?" Her chest heaved up and down as she breathed steadily out of her nose. 

Mitch stood where she had been standing, lined himself up, rotated his hip and landed a blow that tipped the dummy over. He leaned over and picked it up off the floor. 

"Show me again." 

Mitch obliged and repeated his rapid assault on the sparring dummy, knocking it backwards to the ground once more. He picked it up and stood behind it, waiting for Willa to try. She copied him to the best of her ability and landed a harder blow. 

"That's still not right. You're not rotating enough. The point is to get your body's weight into it more, and considering you don't weigh much, you need as much power behind it as you can." Mitch told her. 

Her nostrils flared in frustration and she shook her head. "Show me what I'm doing wrong." She insisted, as she rubbed her fist against her nose, and pushed the hair away from her face, slicking it back with her sweat. Mitch stood next to her, about to deliver another kick, when she stopped him. "No.." She grabbed his hands in hers and placed them on her hips, maneuvering him behind her. " _Show_ me." 

Mitch's heart began to race. He worried that the heart rate monitor on his Apple Watch would start beeping. He tried to steady his breathing, but the hair she had pulled back into a high braid, rested right under his face and she smelled like a sweet mix of vanilla and sweat. He pushed his fingertips into her hipbones and stood behind her. He pulled her hips in the position that she wasn't getting right on her own, and let go of her. 

"Go." 

She kicked her leg at the dummy and watched as it rippled. 

"Good. Again." He walked behind it and braced his hands on the back of the dummy. She kicked, this time pushing the dummy and Mitch back a step. He smiled. "Better. Again."

After a half hour of them training together, Mitch sat next to her on the cushioned mats. He watched as she undid the boxing tape on her hands; her knuckles somewhat bruised. They were purple and yellow already and he wondered where she got the marks from, noting that they were too old to have been from working out tonight. 

"Thank you for helping me earlier." She glanced over at the handsome man sitting next to her, taking a sip of his water. 

"What's going on there?" Mitch asked, beginning to unravel the tape on his own hands. 

"It's nothing. I have it covered." She glanced at his watch, touching his arm to read the time. Electricity pumped through his system at her touch. "It's late. We should head back." 

Mitch stood, held his hand out for her, and helped her up. They walked back to the main house in silence. "I'm liking the book so far." He told her, as they walked through the front door. 

Willa broke her serious demeanor and finally smiled. "I'm glad." She paused outside of her bedroom door. "I'm gonna go shower... I'll see you." 

Mitch smiled to the best of his ability and nodded.

* * *

He walked into his own room and gathered his things for a shower. He walked through the hall with his towel slung over his shoulder, and his boxer briefs secured around his waist.

As he walked in the bathroom, he saw Collins and the other man loitering by the sinks. He looked around for Dan and didn't see him. He saw Willa's towel hanging from the hook outside of the first shower stall and steam rising from the top. He heard nothing but water running. He placed his towel on the hook to the second stall, and hung his caddy from the faucet. He heard a muffled squeal come from the stall next to him. Then he heard a banging, like someone kicking against the wall. He glanced at the two guys standing by the sinks and lunged for the shower curtain to the first stall. He ripped it back as Collins and the medium-build guy lunged at him. 

Before his eyes he saw a naked Willa struggling against a naked Dan, who had his hand covering her mouth, and his arm wrapped around her stomach, hoisting her off of the wet floor. Dan looked bewildered that he was caught assaulting Willa. She used the moment of his guard being down and bit his hand. 

"You stupid bitch!" Dan yelled, as he threw her against the tiled wall. She hunched over and punched him in the groin. Their struggle spilled out from the shower. 

Mitch punched the smaller man in the gut, and then roundhouse kicked, just like he had shown Willa earlier, Collins in the head. He swiftly took down Collins by smashing his head against the sink. He heard the sound of porcelain and teeth cracking. Mitch went after the medium-built man, he snapped his wrist, and put him in a sleeper hold, watching him drop to the floor. Willa had gotten the upperhand on Brunski and had her small fingers wrapped in his hair. She began repeatedly slamming his head against the white tile of the shower stall. Blood and skin stuck to the wall as she continued her assault. Brunski had stopped fighting back. 

Mitch thought about letting her kill him, then decided to step in. He pulled her off of him. She kicked and hit against Mitch as he lifted her the same way that Brunski had only moments before. He brought her back into the shower, and sat her under the hot water. She brought her knees up to her chest and stared at Mitch's face. He sat on the wet tile with her, watching the blood wash from her cut up hands and face and arms, down the drain. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her naked body. 

He tried to get his own breathing under control. He watched as the blood slowed from her knuckles and forehead, and got up, and turned off the shower. 

"Mitch." She said through heavy breaths.

He pulled her towel off the hook and wrapped it around her her back. He stood her up. She was wobbly on her feet. He pulled his towel off the other hook and wrapped it around her front. He walked with his left arm around her back, and his right hand clasped over hers, as they stepped over the pile of bodies that began to come to. He took Willa into his room, and closed the door. He walked back to the bathroom, dripping wet and still wearing his underwear, collected his shower caddy, and shoes and her shower caddy and shoes, and draped them over his arm. 

He saw Dan begin to stir, his eye swollen shut and his face plastered in blood. Mitch leaned in close to Dan's ear, and placed his free hand around his throat. "If you ever come near her again, I'll kill you with my bare hands." Mitch whispered. Dan flinched at the sound of Mitch's threat. 

Mitch walked out of the bathroom and back into his bedroom. Willa was exactly where he had left her, standing in the middle of the room, motionless, clutching the towels to her body, and dripping onto his floor. He softly closed the door behind him, placing the shower paraphernalia on the floor. Mitch reached into his dresser and pulled out two pairs of boxer briefs, and two t-shirts. He pulled his wet underwear off his body and threw them by his closet. He then pulled the dry, clean pair up over himself, then yanked the shirt over his still wet head and body. It clung to the droplets of water on his chest and back. He walked over to Willa, raised her arm and placed it through one armhole of the second shirt. He did the same with the second armhole, letting her switch her hands to clutch at the towels. He pulled it over her head, and looked into her eyes. She was blank. 

Mitch crouched down in front of her, grabbing one ankle to lift it off the ground and placed it in a leg hole of his second pair of boxer briefs. He did the same with the other foot, then pulled them slowly up her legs, his thumbs on the inside of the elastic waistband, trailing along her upper thighs, under the towel. He secured the underwear around her hips and removed his hands. She had been watching him the entire time. He stood up straight, towering above her again, and looked down into her eyes. They were bloodshot. He pulled the towels gently from her hands, and away from her body. 

He dropped the towels by his door and turned around to look at her. His plain white, cotton t-shirt was oversized and hung off of her petite frame. She looked exhausted. All that trauma and he still was struck by her beauty. He walked up to her, careful to move slow, and pressed his thumb into her cheek, wrapping the rest of his fingers around the base of her neck. She pushed her head into his hand, and closed her eyes, her brow furrowed. He pulled her close against him. She winced in pain. 

He sat her on his bed, moving his hands along her head, hands, legs, arms and back, looking for any cuts that may need attending to. He placed a bandaid, that he kept in his first aid kit in his closet, over a bleeding cut on her forehead. He looked at all of the blood and skin and trauma that rested under her fingernails. "Fuck. He whispered to himself. He grabbed a tissue, wrapping it around his pointer finger, and began cleaning the debris from under her nails. She watched his face the whole time.

"You should sleep."

He pulled the covers back behind her on the bed, and turned, grabbed the book she had leant him off his nightstand and sat in the wooden chair in the corner of the room. He heard feet shuffle outside of his door, realizing that the attackers had probably finally been found laid out in the bathroom. He watched as she shut her eyes and clutched the blankets on his bed around her. He shut out the light next to him and closed the book. He didn't sleep a wink, just sat in the corner all night watching her lay still in his bed. 


	6. Day 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch spends the entire day after the attack searching for Willa. When she finally shows up in his room that night, he is surprised by her actions.

He pulled the wooden chair up next to his bed and leaned forward in it, his hands folded in front of him, elbows resting against his thighs, and he looked up at her. Her eye had turned black and her right pinky was swollen as if it were broken. It was 0515 and Mitch was waiting for her to talk. She sucked on the inside of her lower lip. It had been split against her teeth when Dan had hit her across the face the night before. The bruises on her body were starting to turn purple as time brought them to the surface.

"Are you going to tell Stan?" Mitch asked, glancing up at her. 

"No."

Mitch stared into her eyes. They were blank. 

"I'm a CIA black ops counterterrorist trainee. I probably would've been sexually assaulted in the field eventually. It comes with the territory of being a woman."

"That's bullshit." Mitch didn't like the thought of it. 

She ran her tongue against the outside of her top teeth. 

"It is what it is, Rapp." He didn't like the way that she was cutting herself off and pushing him away. She shifted in his bed, pulling her bare legs over the side next to him. She was still wearing his t-shirt and boxer briefs. "Thank you for helping me last night, but you don't need to worry about it." 

His heart beat hard against his chest, and he rubbed the back of his pointer finger against his nose. He watched as she grabbed her towel and shower caddy off the floor next to his door. "Willa." She turned to look at him. 

"I'm okay. I'll see you at the range." She walked out of his bedroom.

* * *

 

Mitch looked for her at the gun range, but Willa was missing. Stan was noticeably absent as well. 

"Did you hear what happened to Brunski, Collins and Clemens?" Rob asked Mitch as they sat down for lunch. The table was emptier than usual, missing four particular bodies. 

Mitch didn't signal one way or the other what he knew, he just glanced up at Rob and shoveled the food in his mouth. Rob continued talking anyway. 

"Someone shattered Dan's temporal bone and cheekbone, and then broke seven of Collin's teeth against the sink, which also broke, and Clemens somehow got off with just a hairline fracture in his wrist and a mild concussion. Did you hear anything last night? Your bedroom isn't that far from the bathroom." Rob asked. 

Mitch just raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. 

Willa was missing from language class. Four hours of Arabic proved to be brutal for Mitch without her face to glance over at. He began to get nervous. He walked over to her bedroom before dinner and knocked on the door. He noticed his clothes laying in her laundry basket with his towel as well. Two sets of shirts and three pairs of his boxer briefs. She had gone into his room at some point during the day and taken his clothes to wash them. He dropped them back in the mesh basket and surveyed the rest of the room. She had cleaned up from the fight the other morning. He looked at the picture frame that had once rested on her dresser, layed flat on her desk with shards of glass missing. He looked at the mother in the picture. She bore a striking resemblance to Willa at her current age. He realized that Willa must have been the little girl in the picture. He placed it back on the dresser, and walked out of her room. Nothing gave him a clue as to where she was. He had to assume that she was talking to Stan. 

Mitch walked out of her bedroom and sat at the dining room table, away from Rob and Julian this time. He couldn't handle another line of questioning without talking to Willa first. He had no appetite. It was a light day of training without Stan and he wasn't as ravenous by that hour as he usually was. He stared at Stan's office door as he slumped over the table. He was done.

He walked back into his bedroom and paced. He began doing pull-ups on the bar that he had installed in the doorframe of his closet. He had done about 120 pull-ups and had finally tired out. He wiped the sweat off with his shirt and threw it in his own laundry basket. He stripped down to nothing and got into his bed. It was 2300 hours and he had to give up on the hopes that he would see her again today. He tried to get himself to think and care about what Katrina would have thought about the whole situation. He couldn't. He could only think about what Willa could be going through at that very second. 

He tossed and turned, getting twisted in his sheets as he tried to fall asleep. He turned his head at the noise of his bedroom door opening. He sat up in bed, reaching above him to turn on the light. His covers moving dangerously low on his pelvis. The room illuminated, and Willa stood with her back against the door. She was wearing a baggy t-shirt and black, cotton leggings. She stared at Mitch's uncovered chest. He stared back at her. 

"Where were you today?" Mitch asked her, finally breaking the silence. 

Willa stayed glued against the door. "Stan knew that I was having some trouble with Brunski, he figured that I was involved with the fight last night, and he spent the majority of the day trying to get to the bottom of it." 

"Did you tell him the truth?" Mitch asked her. She shook her head. 

"I kept you out of it too." 

That didn't quite matter to Mitch. He furrowed his brow at her and leaned forward, resting his long, muscular arms, over his knees in bed. "Are you okay?" He wanted to get up and be closer to her, but he remembered that he wasn't wearing anything under his blankets. 

She shook her head, a more upset version of her serious look spread across her face. She opened her mouth and hesitated. Mitch stared straight into her eyes, waiting for what she had to say. "Can I sleep in here again?"

"Yea, just let me get dressed.." Mitch threw his right leg out over the side of the bed. 

Willa walked forward and shook her head. She pushed against his chest, lightly forcing him back to his pillow. "I don't care."

"Willa, I'm naked under here and after last night, I don't want you to.."

She cut him off. "You didn't attack me last night... It's fine." She lifted the sheets enough to slide under, but not enough to see his cock. Mitch slid against the wall, away from where she was laying, and gave her space. He didn't know what to do with his arms, hands, legs, dick. His entire body laid awkwardly next to her. 

"Am I bothering you?" She asked quietly. 

"No." Mitch answered honestly. 

"Then relax." 

Mitch slid back down into the bed, his head propped up against his pillow, and he rest his arm above her head, on the other pillow. 

"What happened with you and Brunski and those guys?" Mitch asked. 

Willa didn't turn to look at him, but she answered his question. "Brunski didn't like that I was here.. if you haven't noticed, I'm the only female... I've been here longer than any other recruit and it's made me good. Dan was agitated because when he got here three months ago, I put him down during the Circle Initiation too."

"That doesn't seem like reason to try to rape you." She flinched at the word, and finally turned to face Mitch, her knee touched his. He didn't move. 

"He thought that I was sleeping with Stan and that's how I've gotten so good and how I have stayed in the program as long as I have.. I guess three months was too long for just Brunski and his hand. He came in my room the other morning, climbed in my bed and tried to attack me. He kept saying, 'I've seen the way Rapp looks at you, if he's fucked you, why can't I?'"

Mitch watched as she stared at the hair in between his pectoral muscles and would not make eye contact with him. 

"I fought him off, and I thought I squashed it."

"He told his friends." Mitch finally caught her eyes with his. 

She lifted her eyebrows in agreement. "You caught what they did in the woods. They were trying to keep me from finishing the race so that I would get kicked out. Then last night, Clemens saw you and I in the gym. He said that he saw my face when you stood behind me and he knew that I was a slut. He and Brunski were going to take turns raping me, and then they were going to threaten your life if I talked. That's when you walked in."

Mitch's chest rose and sank as his breath became rigid and heavy. He wished he had killed all three of them last night. 

"They'd been trying to pull shit for weeks. It just got worse when you got here." 

"Why?" Mitch asked, trying to steady his breathing and calm down. 

She looked up into his deep brown eyes. He knew why. There was something going on between the two of them. "It's late and I am pretty sure that you didn't sleep at all last night either." 

Mitch looked at Willa with surprise. He thought she had slept, even for just a few hours. She was right, he was tired. He watched as she slowly curled her body closer to his. His heart began racing. Katrina had been dead for a year and a half and he hadn't been really touched by a woman in that entire amount of time, other than the times he had been sharing with Willa. She leaned her head against his chest, her hands stayed above the sheets. He brought his hand up and rested it against her head. He felt better with her close. He felt better with her in a place where he could protect her. Willa's legs stayed straight against his, and nothing inappropriate touched anything. He very slowly and hesitantly wrapped his other arm around her slender body, and fell asleep, cradling her.


	7. Day 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa finally open up about their respective origin stories and why they both ended up being recruited by the CIA, and finally kiss.

 

> _Mitch woke up when he felt something rub against his dick. He opened his eyes, looked down and saw himself spooning a beautiful woman. He had his arms wrapped around her, her fingers intertwined in his, her soft hair brushed against his clavicle as she moved her head slightly. He realized that in his sleep, he had pushed his body up against hers, and rested peacefully. Guilt swept over his body as he felt his semi-erect cock, pushed up against her back, and he thought of his dead fiancee. He was paralyzed, caught between two colliding worlds: the glimmer of hope for a new future versus the promise he had made to avenge his past. Then he thought of what Willa had gone through the night before and the last thing he wanted was to add to her trauma._
> 
> _Mitch's alarm went off, and he reached above his head, towards his window ledge, to shut it off. Willa stirred, and Mitch loosened his grip around her body. He heard her breathe heavily._
> 
> _"Are you okay?" She asked him._
> 
> _"Yea."_
> 
> _Willa sat up next to him, and shook her head. "No you're not." Mitch stared at her dewy morning face, her hair was as perfect as it was when she fell asleep. She was right. He was riddled with internal conflict and rage._
> 
> _"Willa..."_
> 
> _She got out of his bed, opened his door, and snuck back into her room. Mitch slumped back into his bed, covering his eyes with his hands. He didn't know what to do about anything._
> 
>  

* * *

 

 Over a week had passed since Willa was attacked and sexually assaulted, and just as long had passed since she had slept in Mitch's bed with him. She had been avoiding him ever since. She ate meals alone in her room, went on late night runs by herself through the woods and skipped most of the exercises with the group of men that remained, Mitch included. He wanted nothing more than to talk to her but she refused as the last thing he was going to do was force her into any situation she did not initiate.

Mitch had been at Stan Hurley's secret CIA black ops training camp for a little over a month. He was quickly climbing to the top of the recruits, even though other people had been there for months longer than him. With Willa avoiding him, Mitch was spending most of his time at the shooting range. He had probably dropped thousands of bullets out of the barrel of his gun into targets, both stationary and moving. He would do push ups, crunches, and pull-ups until he tired himself out each night, only to fall in a pattern of nightmarish dreams, that became a muddled mess of Katrina and Willa, both fighting for their lives and Mitch always failing to save either of them. All he wanted was to talk to Willa, but she refused. She knew his schedule and she was literally training at being an actual master of evasion. 

 

The evening of Day 31 rolled around. Mitch and the rest of the recruits had gotten back from a particularly grueling day in the pool. They had been treading water for three hours straight, with fear of being expelled from the program if they failed. Willa was talking to one of the instructors in the dining room, holding a tray full of food, when the group came back in. Mitch paused by the front door, wanting to talk to her but waiting for his moment, when the door to Stan's office opened.

Mitch saw Willa's face go white, and he turned his head to see Peter Collins, one of the men who had attacked Willa, walk out of Stan's office. Stan walked out with him. "I just want to make something clear." Stan caught everyone's attention, including Mitch's. "I know you all know this, but romantic relationships, in both the trainee programs and in the actual Agency are explicitly prohibited. If you are carrying on in one, I advise you end it or I will end your career." Stan went back into his office. 

Mitch surveyed the room and realized that both Willa and Collins had slipped out. Mitch took off towards Willa's bedroom, and saw Collins close Mitch's bedroom door behind him. Mitch forced the door open and tackled Collins' to the ground. 

"I know you heard what I told Brunski that night, if you ever lay a finger on her again, I will kill you." Mitch wrapped his large hands around Collins' throat. 

"I just wanted to apologize." Collins tried to look at Willa, standing in the corner, watching Mitch. 

"I don't care. Don't come near her again."

Collins recognized the rage in Mitch's eyes and as soon as his hand released from his throat, Collins' scrambled to his feet and ran out of the bedroom. Mitch closed the door and locked it.

Willa sat on Mitch's bed and stared at her hands. Mitch noticed something shiny glimmering from within her fist. He walked over and peeled back her fingers. She was holding a small butterfly knife closed. He took it from her and placed it on his dresser. He kneeled back in front of her, his hands pressed into the mattress on either side of her to steady himself.

"If you don't tell Stan what happened, the other two will probably come back too, and I don't know if they'll be as apologetic." 

"No. I cannot be the agent who got almost got raped by other agents. No one can know about this." 

"I'm not always going to be there to protect you!" Mitch shouted at her. 

"Do I really seem that weak to you?" She asked, rising to her feet. "Change into gym clothes." She swiped her knife off the dresser and walked into her bedroom. 

Mitch changed and waited outside his door for her. She finally emerged in a tight zip-up hoodie, mesh cut-out black leggings and her sneakers. He followed her to the gym, and watched as she pulled her hair up into a tight ponytail. She took off her shoes, revealing black socks underneath, and unzipped her hoodie. She stood before him in a black sports bra, her toned stomach peeking out from above her high waisted leggings. He salivated at the sight of her. 

The gym was quiet. Only a few other trainees were around since it was late. Mitch pulled his shoes off and lifted his shirt over his head, throwing it on the floor on top of Willa's sweatshirt. He saw her pick up a weighted training knife from the equipment table in the corner of the room, stepped up onto the padded mat with Mitch and stared at him. "Take it from me." 

Mitch charged at her, picking her up by the waist, until she began climbing up his body, the knife still in her grip. She wrapped her thighs around Mitch's neck, and jerked all of her weight forward, tossing him on his back. She leaned over him and put the blade to his throat. She hovered over him for a moment, the two of them panting and staring at each other. 

She got up to reset and he swept her feet out from under her. She fell to the mat and Mitch climbed on top of her. He pushed her own wrist against her, forcing the practice knife towards her throat. She pushed back on his hands, and then hit her knuckles into the place where Mitch's shoulder met his collarbone. Mitch pulled back, and she wriggled out from underneath him. 

She got back to her feet, bouncing from side to side on the balls of her feet. He took a crouched stance, and decided to charge her. He wrapped his arms around her small body and pinned her to the floor. He felt the dull weighted blade, press into his back. 

"That was stupid.. I killed you..." Mitch stared down at her. Not holding her down, he kept his hands pressed against the mat beside her head. She could feel his breath, hot, against her face. "Damnit, Mitch, I told you to disarm me!" She raised her voice. At that moment, Mitch pressed his lips against Willa's. She dropped the knife to the ground and ran her fingers up to his hair.

He pulled away and looked into her striking green eyes. A smirk spread across his face. He sat up, and dangled the knife in his between his fingers. "I disarmed you." A look of disbelief spread across her face. "Disarm me."

Willa rolled backwards into a standing position. She charged forward to fight Mitch, getting into hand-to-hand combat. She blocked his jabs with the knife, and grabbed his wrist. She thrust her elbow down onto his wrist several times before he lost the grip of the knife and it dropped to the floor. She took his wrist and pulled it across her body, the same move she had used the first time they had fought on his first day. 

"Wait, wait.." Mitch caught her attention and she let him go. "Show me how you do that again." 

She demonstrated the move slower for him to see. He tried it back on her, and she flipped him onto his back. She knelt down over him, and grinned. "I forgot to tell you that there is a way out of that hold too."

Mitch reached up, his arms heavy and tired, and placed his calloused and rough hand against her cheek. He pulled her in close to him, and kissed her again. Her body dropped against his. Her bare sweaty stomach pressed against him. Her heaving and ample bust, spilling out onto his chest. She broke the kiss and swept the hair out of his eyes. She watched as he licked his lips. 

"So you didn't just do that to get the knife away from me." She said as she dropped her body next to his. Exhaustion taking over, they had been fighting and rolling around on the mat for over a full hour. 

"I wouldn't do that." Mitch said quietly, as he ran his fingers down her arm. He felt her shiver as he touched her. 

Willa took a breath and turned to Mitch, who was still laying on his back, one hand propped up under his head, the other still tracing lines on her body. "What happened the morning after I slept with you?" 

Mitch sat up next to her, and wiped the sweat off of his upper lip. "Two years ago, I was on a Jordanian beach on vacation, celebrating getting my first real job with the state department, and proposing to my girlfriend from college when the Bahi terror group led by a man named Mansour executed a terrorist attack that killed twenty-three people, including Katrina."

"You're the guy that's been taking down the sleeper cells..." Willa's eyes became large. 

"That's how Irene Kennedy found me and how I ended up here. I vowed to get justice for Katrina, but I needed help. I couldn't keep doing it alone, I wasn't accomplishing enough." Mitch never broke eye contact with the woman across from him. 

"I'm sorry, Mitch... I'm sorry you went through that."

Mitch nodded. "Why are you here?"

Willa paused and looked down at the mat. Mitch noticed tears collecting in her eyes. "Have you ever seen that picture in my room?" 

"Yea, it's you with your family in Manhattan." 

"My parents worked for Cantor Fitzgerald."

Mitch sat up. He knew exactly where she was going with her story. He remembered reading about the famous capital investments firm, which had it's offices above where the planes hit and didn't have a single survivor from the terror attacks. He watched her face as she spoke about her past. 

"I was nine when the World Trade Center went down. My brother faked sick that morning but my parents didn't believe him so they took him to work with them. He was fifteen. We got dismissed from school early but no one ever came home. My Uncle Stan drove in from Virginia that night but couldn't reach me until the next day. Terrorists killed my family, so I spent my formative years learning French and Arabic and Russian at the urging of my uncle, who took me in and raised me to be serious and focused and determined...that's how I got involved with the CIA."

Mitch narrowed his eyes at her. Something about the story was off. "......Uncle Stan?"

Willa met his stare. "My full name is Wilhelmina Grace Hurley." She looked down at her hands. 

"As in, Stan Hurley is the uncle that raised you?" Mitch said, bewilderment in his voice. "As in that Stan?" Mitch pointed out to the direction of the main house.

"Yes." She answered hesitantly.

"That explains why you didn't want to tell him about Brunski and them... and why you've been here so long... When did you find out he was in the CIA?" Mitch asked. 

"He started grooming me when he adopted me. He is the reason I speak fluent French, Pashto and Russian. He wanted me to carry on his work with the Agency. I'd spend my summers here in high school, learning how to fight and shoot guns. He put me in the counterterrorist field office in Manhattan when I was in my undergrad at Columbia... my success in all of this has been an obsession of his, but he's too afraid to actually put me in the field." 

Mitch shook his head, and placed his hand over hers in her lap. "We should head back in." Mitch advised. Willa nodded and stood up, zipping her jacket back up over her sweaty body. 

* * *

 

Mitch sat on her bed and watched her standing in front of her bookcase. He had returned  _The Great Gatsby_ to her that night, even though he had finished it a week ago. He asked her for a new book. She pulled  _Catch-22_ by Joseph Heller down and placed it in Mitch's hands. 

"It's about Air Force pilots in World War II trying to get through their mission without losing their minds." She leaned against the bed, pulled her shoes off and flung them into her closet. 

"Thank you.."

She paused, staring into his dark eyes. Being around him helped to quell the anxiety and fear that she had been feeling since the attack. She felt closer to him after finally telling him the secret about her relationship to Stan and the trauma of what happened to her family. She pressed her small hand against the stubble on his jaw. "Stay here tonight."

Mitch nodded and she smiled. Her smile sent him into a frenzy. Mitch pulled her over onto the bed and pressed his soft lips against hers again. She fell softly against her mattress underneath him, and watched as he unzipped her jacket slowly. He slipped his hand against the small of her back once the zipper broke apart, revealing her mostly naked torso. He greedily stuck his tongue in her mouth. She ran her fingers up his veiny biceps, and dug her nails in to his skin. She massaged his tongue with hers and began pulling at the back of Mitch's shirt. 

A light rapping at Willa's door sent the two trainees back into their original places. Willa zipped up her jacket, and opened the door as Mitch flipped through the book on the edge of her bed. 

"Hey, Willowtree..."

Willa sighed, closed her eyes and shook her head. "Don't call me that, Rob."

Rob ignored her and pushed into her bedroom. Mitch grinned at the nickname. "Can you help me with the Pashto from the language skills lab this morning?" Rob paused when he saw Mitch. "Hey, Rapp. What's up?" 

"Just came by to borrow a new book from Willowtree." He shook the hardcover book in his hand and hopped off her bed. 

"I have got to say, I did not think that you had a single funny bone in your body, Mitch. But that was good." Rob said, socially oblivious to the fact that that was a rude comment. 

Willa rolled her eyes, and glanced at Mitch. "Thanks, Rob... I'll see you tomorrow?" 

"Yep." Rob announced and then sat down in Willa's desk chair. Mitch walked into his room. "So it's the formal versus the informal that's really getting me.." Rob started, looking up at Willa. 

"Hold on. I forgot to tell Mitch something about the book, I'll be right back." Willa walked across the hall and opened the door. Mitch was down to his boxer briefs. She closed the door behind her, and watched as he approached her, her beating in her ears. He pressed her up against the door and kissed her again. When he pulled back, her eyes were still closed and she pressed her tongue against her lips. 

"You should get back over there." Mitch whispered, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. 

"Can we talk about tonight.. tomorrow night?"

"Yea, definitely, and maybe I can sleep over then?."

Willa nodded enthusiastically. "Okay... Great.." 

"Goodnight." Mitch whispered inches from her face. 

Willa spoke louder, as she opened the door. "Yea, goodnight. Enjoy the book." Mitch walked away shaking his head and chuckling, as she closed the door behind her, catching a momentary glimpse of his ass as he dropped his boxer briefs.

"Fuck." She whispered, and walked back into her bedroom.


	8. Day 52

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willa struggles with Mitch's absence from The Barn.

It had been three weeks since he pressed her up against his bedroom door and kissed her. She hadn't seen him since.

 

She laid awake in her bed and stared at the morning sun moving across her walls. She heard the faint rolling of tires against gravel and assumed that Stan had come back from his trip. He had been in and out of The Barn constantly in the past three weeks. She didn't bother to get up and look. Instead, she got dressed: sports bra, tank top, shorts, socks, hair tie, sneakers. She could do a solid ten miles in the woods before she had to be back for morning target practice. 

She sprinted through the woods, her heart racing. She could feel it pumping throughout her entire body. She bent over, her hands pressed against her knees as she caught her breath. She continued on, running the entire way back, without stopping, to the main house. She grabbed her shower stuff and towel and walked to the bathroom. She stripped in the stall, leaving her clothes inside, not caring if they got wet. She shut her eyes as the water rinsed the soap out of her hair and had a flashback of Dan covering her mouth and running his hands over her breasts. She opened her eyes and pressed her palms against the tiled walls around her. Her legs shook, and she crouched down, the water falling on her back.

"Damnit." She slammed her fist against the tile. She steadied her breathing. She could never be a successful CIA agent and be having PTSD. She shook her right hand, trying to make the shakes go away. She turned off the water, gathered her things, wrapped the towel around her body, and walked to her room. She threw a sweater on over her tank top, it covered most of her jean shorts, and she tied up her brown combat boots. She lazily brushed her hair back, and swirled it into a tight, wet bun.

* * *

 

She glanced at his door, still closed, everything inside untouched, and walked out to the shooting range. Most of the men were picking guns off the table and then going to their usual alley to do their target practice. She picked up an SR-25 off the table. She was pissed off and wanted to shoot something big and effective. She crouched into position, leaning her elbow and the weapon against the cinderblock ledge, and lightly rested her cheek near the scope adjusting the range. She looked up when she heard the walkie talkie next to her crackle.

"What do you want today, Will?" The man said through the walkie talkie. 

"Make 'em move." She put the radio back on the table. 

Her targets began to move erratically in her shooting lane. Aim, exhale, pull. One bullseye. Aim, exhale, pull. Second bullseye. She pressed her cheek back up under the scope. The last target was farther. She cleared her mind. Opened her eyes and began tracking the moving target through the air. Aim... Aim... exhale, pull. Bullseye. She watched the target float as it dropped in the air. Aim, exhale, pull. 

"Damn, girl, I think you hit that thing dead center twice." The instructor over the walkie talkie said. 

Willa glanced over and turned the volume down on the radio. She looked up from her gun and saw that four other lanes were using the moving target systems. She thought back. She had sixteen shots left in her magazine. She pressed her cheek under the scope again. Aim, exhale, pull. Bullseye. Aim exhale, pull. Bullseye. She did this until her magazine was empty.

She pulled it out and reloaded. Her firing time was getting quicker. In two minutes flat, she had shot a bullseye into every moving target in the firing range. She put the safety back on her gun, removed her safety goggles, and placed her designated marksmanship rifle on the supply table next to her.

She looked up and caught the glares of the four guys who's targets she had shot down for them. She didn't care. She walked back to the main house. The SR-25 did nothing to quell her anger. 

She went through the motions of the day, a bit more rigorous since Stan was at The Barn. 0600 - breakfast, which she grabbed on the way back from her run. 0645 to 0745 was the gun range. At 0800, Stan sent the group into the Schoolhouse to run tradecraft and language seminars. 1200 hours was lunch. 1300 hours was technical and coding training back at the Schoolhouse. At 1615, Stan paired everyone up, zip-tied their wrists together behind their backs, and dropped them in the pool in the gym. Tread water and get yourself out of the zipties was the mission. By 1830, everyone had made it out of the pool and Stan dismissed everyone for the evening. 

Willa stayed behind, swimming laps and punishing her already sore legs further. After her twenty-fifth lap, Willa swam to the shallow end, threw her arms on to the concrete and rested her head against the side of the pool. She pushed up against the concrete and pulled herself out of the pool. She walked over to the towel she had draped on the chair and threw it over her shoulder. She grabbed her bag off the ground and went into the the locker room to shower. 

The Barn was quiet, even though it was only 9PM, as she walked back to the main house from the gym. She sighed, and begrudgingly walked back to her bedroom, knowing that his door would still be closed and he would still not be in there. 

"Everything okay, Will? Adkins told me you've been going extra hard and pissing people off lately." Stan said from the comfort of his lawn chair at the top of the stairs, just outside the front door. 

Willa ran her hand through her soaking wet tresses, shaking them out and spraying water on the ground below her. "I'm fine, Stan. Just trying to master everything so you will finally let me out of here, and allow me to go on a real mission." 

"In time, kid." Stan relaxed back into his chair, and took a swig of his beer. Willa rolled her eyes and walked through the front door. 

* * *

 

She glanced at his door. Still closed. She checked her watch before she entered her room. 2330 hours. She sighed. It was late. She opened her bedroom door and saw him, sitting on her bed, hands folded in front of him, his chocolate brown eyes raising from the floor to see her face. 

He got up off her bed, walked towards her, pressed his body against hers, ran his fingers up against her cheeks and kissed her. She dropped her bag to the floor and wrapped her arms around his torso. He didn't care that they were sticking out in the hallway. He had been dreaming about that kiss for 21 days. "Hi." 

"Hi." She checked her surroundings. No one was in the hall. She pushed him inside of her room, grabbed her bag, threw it under her bed, and locked the door behind her. "Are you okay?"

Mitch nodded. He stood back, revealing a tight fitting black thermal with buttons at the chest, that he had the sleeves rolled up on, and a pair of blue jeans and his usual brown leather boots. "Are you okay?" He asked. 

Willa shook her head. "Where have you been?" 

"With Stan." 

Willa narrowed her eyes and walked over to him. "With Stan?" 

"Not the whole time, but most of it."

Willa shook her head. She didn't understand. She sat on the bed next to Mitch, pulling her boots off of her feet, and massaging her toes. He saw what she was doing, and grabbed her feet, pulling them into his lap. She slid over her blankets towards him and shut her eyes in relief as he began pressing his thumbs into the bottoms of her feet. Mitch stared at her, feeling at ease himself at being back in her presence. 

"Do you want me to go so you can sleep? We can talk tomorrow."

Willa perked up, pulling her feet from his hands and sitting up in the middle of the bed. "Two things: I don't want you to go anywhere, I want you to sit in my bed and tell my what the hell happened the past three weeks AND if we sleep at all tonight, we are not doing it in separate rooms." 

Mitch smiled, brought his legs up onto the bed, crossed them, and brought her feet back into his lap.

"I don't want to keep things from you. You trusted me with your secret."

"Then tell me where you've been."

"About two weeks after I got here, Stan came into my room first thing in the morning and gave me a five minute warning that I'd be going somewhere with him. I wasn't to pack anything, just swallow the pill he left on my dresser. I did what he said and the next thing I remember, I woke up in this underground warehouse, where they had me taking IQ tests and logic exams and running physical's and stress tests. My last day there, they hooked me and a bunch of other guys up to this virtual reality machine that put us in to a terrorist plot. I killed every terrorist without a single life lost." 

Half way through Mitch's story, Willa had pulled her feet from his hands, and was sitting up listening to him intently from across the bed. 

"Director Kennedy told me that I was going to be a new operative in a covert organization supported by the CIA but held outside of the Agency, headed by Stan, called the Orion Team. Stan kept calling it his 'Ghost Protocol Training'."

"And that's where you were the past three weeks?" Willa asked. 

Mitch nodded. "They had me swimming, running, biking, climbing, fighting, and shooting and learning code..." 

Willa interrupted him. "That's all shit you do here."

Mitch shook his head. "These were fifteen or sixteen hour days of non-stop training. I am now fluent in French. It is twenty times more intense than here." 

"What is the point of all of this?" Willa asked, afraid of the answer. 

"There is a guy that they trained and then he turned. They've been tracking him for years and every so often he pops up, and he's fucking dangerous. I saw the pictures of what he did in Yemen and Iran. He's a trained agent of chaos.. Stan said that in order to kill what he created, he needs to make another Ghost. Irene and him think I'm the right candidate for the job."

"Who is this guy?" 

Mitch shook his head. "Stan won't tell me any specifics, but he promised that once I take this guy out, he'll embed me in Jordan, and will help me wipe out the Bahi terrorists that killed Katrina."

"Are you going back soon?" Willa asked, pain in her eyes. 

"No, I'm here training with all of you until they get a solid lead on where this guy is." Mitch leaned forward towards Willa. "I didn't want to leave you. I thought about you every day for three weeks. Every day I spent there, I thought about that kiss and what you were probably thinking since I just vanished. I'm sorry. I know Stan checks my things when I'm at Ghost, I couldn't leave a note." Mitch shook his head. 

"Fine, but if this is going to be a thing.. you disappearing without notice. We need to figure out a signal, something subtle that Stan won't figure out but that I'll know what it means explicitly."

They devised a system. When Stan gave him his few minute warning that he had to leave, Mitch would go into Willa's room and take one of the two books she had leant him. Gatsby meant he was on a mission, Catch-22 meant he had been taken back to Ghost. 


	9. Day 53

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa give in to their desire for one another.

Mitch sat up in her bed, his back leaning against the wall, in nothing but his boxer briefs and a sheet covering his right leg, half reading a chapter in  _The Concise History of the Middle East_ textbook that she had on her bookshelf, and half watching as she sat on the hardwood floor of her bedroom folding the laundry that she had done two mornings before but never got around to taking care of. Ever since the day on the beach in Jordan, a year and a half before, when Katrina died, Mitch had been caught up in a life full of travel, pain, seclusion and violence. He had all but completely forgotten what a sense of normalcy felt like. He forgot what waking up and reading, while the person he was with did something as mundane as folding laundry felt like. He hadn't known Willa long but the commonalities in their life stories and their recent shared experiences bonded them quickly. 

The night before, Mitch had shown back up into Willa's life after being gone for three weeks at Stan Hurley's Ghost Protocol Training camp for the Orion Team. They had talked about what had happened when he was away, Willa forgiving him for leaving so abruptly and without explanation, and they fell asleep in her bed. She woke up with a sense of calm when she saw Mitch fast asleep next to her that morning. He zoned out, watching her meticulously folding and flattening and straightening her clothes. He snapped out of his mindless staring when she got up and started moving around the room, putting her clothes in drawers and in the closet. Mitch took a breath and watched her get dressed in jeans, a loose fitting tank, a light bomber jacket and boots for breakfast and sniper practice later that morning. 

She walked over to the bed, leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. Mitch exhaled softly as she pulled away. He wanted more. 

"I'm going to go brush my teeth and head to breakfast. I'll see you in a little?" 

Mitch nodded and watched as she walked out the door. He got out of her bed and pulled his jeans and black t-shirt off the floor. He tied his shoe laces up and pressed his ear to her bedroom door. He heard no footsteps, so he slipped out and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Mitch ran his fingers through his shaggy hair and looked back in the mirror: he had the semblance of a smile on his face. He was content. 

He walked into the dining room, grabbed a plate full of food and looked for Willa.

Willa tried to hide her grin with her hand and her fork as she saw Mitch sit next to her at the dining room table. "Wearing last night's clothes?" 

Mitch smirked. "They were still clean."

Willa stifled her laughter. "And you look good in it so.." She glanced up at him as she whispered. Mitch hid his smile as he licked his plum-colored lips, and glanced down the table as more men filed into the room. Suddenly, he became alarmed and enraged. He clenched his fist around the fork in his hand and turned to Willa. 

"Clemens is back?" The half-hidden smile that graced his face was gone. 

Willa sighed, placed her fork on the table and leaned forward. She positioned her elbows on either side of her plate, clasping her hands together in front of her face to hide her mouth from everyone but Mitch. "He's been back for about a week."

"Why didn't you tell me last night? Has he done anything?" Mitch leaned in a little too close to Willa. 

"It wasn't on my list of things to discuss with you after three weeks, and no, he hasn't come near me."

"I know it's not my decision, but what happens when Dan comes back, Willa? You don't think he'll try something again? You're a liability to him." Mitch spoke the truth. 

"I'll kill him." She spoke plainly and seriously, as she stared ahead at Clemens, sitting on the other end of the table eating eggs. 

Mitch stared at her. He understood that they were all being trained to become covert assassins but to speak so casually about murdering someone was not Willa's personality. He narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice. "How are you doing with what happened?"

Willa looked up at him, her lips pursed. She cleared her throat, garnering no one's attention. "Nightmares... and flashbacks."

Mitch's chest rose and fell as he tried to breathe through his compulsion to mortally wound Collins and Clemens.

"Mitch... I'm okay. It's okay." She said as she tried to get his attention. "Mitch..... Mitch." Mitch finally looked at Willa. "Nothing is going to happen."

* * *

 

Mitch slipped into Willa's room after sniper practice while everyone was getting changed to go to the gym. She heard the door close and glanced over her shoulder but didn't move from in front of her closet, still trying to piece together a gym outfit. Mitch walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her stomach. She closed her eyes and leaned into his embrace. He reached his right hand up to tilt her face up towards him and triggered a flashback in her. 

"No." Willa shoved Mitch off of her and stumbled onto the ground. Mitch looked horrified as he scrambled to his hands and knees beside her. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry... It was the hand getting close to my mouth. He watched as her hands shook as she tried to cover her mouth and slow her breathing to end the panic attack she was clearly experiencing. 

"I'm gonna kill him." Mitch said as he rose to his feet, and walked towards the door. 

"Mitch, stop." She managed to get to her feet and follow Mitch down the hall to Clemens' door.

He didn't bother knocking, he simply let himself in, saw Clemens sitting on his bed and ran over, pinning him to the mattress with his hand wrapped tightly around his throat. Mitch didn't say anything, he just squeezed. Clemens' face got red as he spit and gasp, trying to get Mitch off of him, but Mitch was stronger and he was fueled by pure and unadulterated hatred. Mitch used his other hand to keep Clemens from pushing off or clawing at him. 

"Mitch, enough." She yelled, as she opened the door. "Stop." She pulled at Mitch's arm, and he relented. "Look at me, look at me." Willa tried to position herself in between the two men. She placed her hands on Mitch's cheeks and brought his gaze down to hers. The blood began to leave his face and his color began to normalize. 

Willa turned and walked up to Clemens who had his hands wrapped around his own throat and was still gasping for more oxygen. "He'll come back here and finish it if you or Collins or Brunski ever come for us." Willa whispered to Clemens. "Do you understand?" Clemens nodded over enthusiastically. "Let's go." She looked at Mitch and followed him out the door. 

* * *

 

Willa knocked on Mitch's door, glancing around to see who else was in the hall. It was empty. Everyone was either finishing up in the bathroom, downstairs playing cards, or already asleep. She knocked again. Mitch opened it a crack. Willa raised her eyebrows at him, and Mitch opened it the whole way. She glanced around again, seeing no one still, and walked inside. Mitch stood in front of her in his clothes from earlier. 

"I'm not sorry."

"I don't want you to be sorry." She told him. 

"Then what do you want?" Mitch asked, his voice raising. "Do you want me to forget it happened? Do you want me to believe that you're okay? Cause I don't. You had a fucking panic attack when I touched you earlier."

"Touch me now." Willa stood in front of him, looking up at his chocolate brown eyes that were filled with anger and worry. Mitch stared down at her and shook his head. He was afraid to touch her. His eyes dropped to his bare feet. "Mitch.." Her small, soft hand grazed against his cheek and pushed through his thick head of hair. He looked back at her. "Touch me."

Mitch stared at her for a moment; his heart beginning to race as he thought about touching her. His instincts overtook his brain, and he wrapped his arms around her waist. He crashed his lips against hers, forcing his tongue inside of her mouth. He pushed her up against his door and pressed every inch of his body that he could against every inch of her. Her fingers found their way under his shirt and clawed at his ribcage. Mitch stepped back and pulled his shirt off over his head. He watched as she did the same. 

He had seen her naked before but this time was completely different. There was no fear or pain; it was just the two of them. He knelt down in front of her and pressed his lips against her stomach. She moaned and intertwined her fingers in his hair, as he licked his way down to her hips. He left sloppy, sucking, wet kisses against her hip bones and pelvis and she squirmed at his touch. 

"Oh god." She said aloud. Mitch glanced up, concerned she was having a flashback, instead he was met with the sight of her head thrown back against the door and her biting her lip. 

Mitch watched her as he hooked his fingers over the elastic in her underwear and shorts. She nodded down at him, consenting to what he was about to do next; reassuring that so far, she was okay. He left a few more kisses on her toned stomach, and began to slowly pull down. He watched as she stepped out of the remainder of her clothing. He wrapped his hands around her legs and kissed against her thighs. Mitch worked his tongue and lips and hands back up her body, standing as he went. She moaned softly as he pushed himself against her again. He lifted his hands to cup her cheeks as he bit on her lips. She moved her hands down to the button and zipper of his jeans, quickly pulling them apart. Mitch pushed his pants and boxer briefs down to his ankles, and looked back at her, as he stood straight up in front of her once more. 

She took in the sight of Mitch's naked body in front of her finally, and pressed her skin against his, his erect cock pressed against her stomach. She worked her delicate hands up his shoulder blades and held him tight as she looked up to kiss him. That was all the invitation that Mitch needed. He hoisted her off the ground. She wrapped her legs around his waist and felt one arm securing her against his body, and the other pushing her face closer to his. He stepped out of his jeans and slowly walked backwards towards his bed. His fingers were tangled in her hair as he sat down on his mattress. He held her in his lap as he ferociously kissed her. She kissed at his neck and shoulders as he closed his eyes and leaned back, finding ecstasy in the way her mouth felt against his body. 

Mitch leaned back into her, kissing Willa hard on the lips. He held her up by her ass in one hand and gripped his long, thick cock in the other. He pushed the tip against her opening. She was dripping wet. He looked in her eyes as she lowered down slowly onto his dick. Her eyebrows furrowing and her breath coming out in short huffs from her barely open lips. He pulled himself further back on the bed, propping a leg underneath her, and stretching the other out as she kept hers wrapped around his back. She slowly rode up and down on him, shuddering each time he filled her back up again. His breathing was ragged as he felt every inch of her walls tight against his swollen cock. He wrapped his fingers in her hair, pulling her head back, and sucked on her jaw, neck, shoulders, collarbones, and breasts, all while maintaining a steady rhythm in and out of her. Her clit rubbed against his pelvis as their bodies writhed against each other.

He watched as she let her head hang backwards, her hair touching the sheets beneath them, and exhaled heavily, her mouth wide open. He cupped his hand around the back of her head and brought her forward. She wrapped her fingers in his chocolate brown hair and they're bodies rubbed against each other. She quickened her pace, pressing down against his member more deliberately. She was both trying to keep rubbing her clit against his pelvis and also get him as deep inside of her as she could. He breathed hot and heavily against her neck as she gyrated against him. Her hair rested against his shoulder and back, and lightly stuck to his sticky skin. She dug her nails into his back as she felt herself climbing to an orgasmic apex. 

She pressed her body hard against him, moving up and down with him deep inside of her, and began to shake. He held her firmly, continuing to thrust in and out of her as the orgasm rolled over her body. She bit her lip, trying to remain quiet, as her body kept shaking. 

"I can't take much more of this." She managed to get out between heavy pants. 

"I can't either." He pushed against her hard, not pulling out anymore at all, he just kept digging deeper, and then slightly released, only to push deep again. She tightened her pelvic muscles around him and pushed him over the top. She held his face against the crook of her neck as he exhaled deeply. She felt his arms wrap tightly against her, their bare, hot skin pressed together, as she felt his cock begin to throb and her pussy warm and fill with his cum. He pressed his teeth against her shoulder as he came inside of her. She shivered at all of the sensations. 

She pulled his head up to hers, and pressed her lips firmly against his. He furrowed his brow as he pushed his lips back against hers. He laid back on his bed, his cock still resting inside of her. He was exhausted. He glanced up at her; her breasts perked up as she pulled her arms up to get the hair off of her sticky skin. He noticed subtle bite marks that he had accidentally left on her shoulder, and red, soon to be purple, hickey's that he had left on her stomach and thighs. She saw his lips curl up in a smile and leaned down to kiss him again. 

He sat up, she unwound her legs from around him, and he watched as she stood, sticking her fingers in between her thighs and rubbing the cum that dripped down her legs, in between her fingers. She turned around, her eyes widening and a smile spreading across her face and Mitch laughed. He grabbed his shirt off the floor and wiped up her inner thighs. 

He dropped the shirt into his laundry, and turned to look at her, laying back on his bed again.

"We should probably talk about this." Mitch said, making light of the fact that they had never really discussed what was going on between them.

Willa laughed a little too loudly, clutching the muscles in her stomach as she did. "Okay, but maybe tomorrow." Mitch nodded and walked over to her. He held her face in his hands, her hands were cupped around the backs of his bicep. She looked up at him with a sleepy, adoring look on her face. He leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. 


	10. Day 54

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch talks to Willa about his past relationship and what it could mean for the two of them.

Mitch pressed his cheek against her hairline and watched her fingers as they brushed through the hair on his chest. Willa nuzzled her head further into Mitch's neck, and he turned his head slightly to kiss her forehead. She found his free hand and intertwined her fingers in his, closing her eyes with a contented sigh as she enjoyed the feeling of her skin pressed against his under his blankets. 

"How are you doing?" Mitch asked quietly. 

She purred. "I'm happy. How are you doing?" 

"No flashbacks or nightmares? Nothing.. triggering from last night?" 

Willa shook her head against his chest. "There's a real difference between what they tried to do and what we did last night."

Mitch nodded, then paused and she lifted her head up to look at his face. "I want to talk about last night."

Willa's heart sunk, and she tried to keep her face from showing her true emotions. "Okay." 

Mitch took a few long moments to decide what he wanted to say first. He had a million thoughts running through his head. He cleared his throat and looked off into blank space in front of him, pensively. "I have spent the past year and a half, since Katrina died, not seeking comfort in my brother or my friends.. no one.. I spent it hardening myself and giving into my rage and hatred and emptiness and wearing all of those things like armor so that I could get done what I needed to get done." Willa sat up, a sheet wrapped around her chest and body. She watched as he struggled to find the words. "I was going to marry Katrina. I loved her for years and then she was gone, and the only thing I had room left for in my heart was revenge."

Willa brought her hand up to her mouth, pressing her fingers against her lips, and feeling herself try to hide the fact that she was trembling. 

"I still love Katrina." Willa felt like she was going to be sick. "And I, I didn't come here with the expectation of any of this happening. I have been struggling to get back to a normal place to be with you because I.... I don't want to give up on getting Mansour and the Bahi. I want to wipe them off the face of this planet, and I intend on doing it, but I'm realizing that I'm going to need something to look forward to and fight for after I've done what I came here to do... I want that something to be you." Mitch glanced at Willa's face and felt his heart pounding in his chest. 

"So you don't regret last night?" Willa had to ask first. It was all she could think about. 

"No... do you?" 

Willa shook her head. "No. I care about you, Mitch."

"Can you come back over here?" Mitch asked her. 

Willa shook her head again. "No. You... I had no idea where that was.... I thought you were about to... you really got my adrenaline going and now I'm just shaky and clammy." She pressed her fingers against the palms of her hands and maintained her distance. 

Mitch leaned forward and wrapped his hands around her blanket-covered ankles. His shaggy brown hair was matted in the back and his growing beard needed to be brushed as well. Despite his bedhead, she still thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. "I didn't mean to upset you. I just had to tell you where my head has been at. I have held a lot of guilt in myself lately over my feelings for you and how quickly they developed and how instantly drawn to you I was. It was why every time we got close, I pulled away. I thought you deserved an explanation if you were going to be with me."

"Be with you?" Willa asked.

Mitch nodded and placed his hand against her cheek. "Be with me." It was less of a question and more of a demand. 

Willa nodded. "Then I'm yours." 

Mitch smiled softly and closed his eyes. He ran his hand from her face to her knee, and pressed his head into her legs. He was relieved and fulfilled by her words. She was his. He exhaled loudly as he felt her hand running through his hair and massaging his scalp. 

"How are we going to do this? It's not like you'll ever be able to take me to dinner, or if we get pulled onto different missions, or... We'll never be normal." Willa worried. 

"Willa, you're training to be a spy, did you just realize that your life will never be normal?" Mitch picked his head up and smirked at her. 

"You know what I mean." She glared at him.

Mitch chuckled, pushed her knees down and rested his head in her lap, wrapping his arm around her back. She went back to playing with his soft chocolate hair. "I get it. But, the plus side is that if I am on the Orion Team, and that's not actually a part of the CIA, then there is nothing that can stop us from being together."

Willa sighed. "That's true but for now.."

"For now, we have to be careful. We can't get caught." 

"For now." Willa echoed. 

Mitch nodded and felt her hand run down his ribcage and up his back. He loved the way she touched him. She moved her fingers under the blanket and pressed them against his defined hipbones. She felt him tense up at her lustful touch. She grinned. 

"You know, I always thought that sex with you would be different." 

Mitch's head popped up from her lap, and he pounced on her, pinning her back to the bed. "You thought about having sex with me for how long and how often?" He grinned from ear to ear. 

Willa laughed, and pushed him off of her. He laid on his side, naked, staring at her adjust onto her side to face him. "I just... you're so serious and intense and... aggressive... and I guess I figured that sex with you would be more rough and dominating... and kinky." Willa raised an eyebrow and smirked. 

"I can do rough and dominating and kinky if that's what you want." Mitch licked his lips and pulled her towards him. 

Willa bit down on her bottom lip and smiled. "I liked last night though too. I have never had someone so intensely focused on me during sex before, not like that. It was..." She sighed. Her words were escaping her. "It was really hot." She laughed quietly. 

Mitch pulled her head in for a kiss. "I liked last night too. I had been thinking about it for weeks and to finally be inside of you and feel your body against mine." Mitch shook his head, and swept a rogue hair out of her face. "It was better than I ever imagined." 

Willa climbed on top of him, completely tangled in his sheets, and greedily shoved her lips against his. She had butterflies in her stomach and she just wanted to feel him inside of her again. He wrapped his arms around her and held her crushingly tight against him. He wanted her just as badly. 

The alarm went off. 

"I fucking hate this place." Willa murmured into the bed beside Mitch's head as they realized that their time together had come to an end until that night. 

* * *

 

Stan had really taken Mitch under his wing since they came back from Ghost Protocol Training. Instead of mixing Mitch in with the other recruits, Stan had Mitch practicing with him as the recruits all practiced with each other. Willa missed being able to occasionally train with him and spend that extra time together throughout the daylight hours, even if they were just beating on each other or training different techniques. Mitch, however, liked watching Willa take down the other male recruits. He enjoyed knowing that she could not only protect herself but really inflict harm on someone else if she wanted or needed. 

Stan got pulled away by a phone call during sniper practice, however, and told Mitch to go help Willa since they were the two that were then left without a partner, mostly because they were both already expert marksmen. Mitch was relieved. He needed to talk to her since that morning when they were in bed together. He laid down on his stomach next to her as she took a shot and hit her target dead on. 

"Will.."

"Yes?" She remained focused, her cheek pressed against the stock of her M24-Sniper Rifle, focusing on her next target through the telescopic lens. She breathed deeply, and then looked up at him. "I can't shoot with you hovering over me like this, what's wrong?" She whispered.

"I came in you last night and we didn't wear a condom and I only just realized that." Mitch was not whispering to the best of his ability.

Willa pursed her lips, trying to keep from laughing. "I know." She buried her face in her arm on the ground and stifled further laughter. "Okay, okay, it's fine. We're covered."

"How?" 

Willa cocked her head to the side. "Mitch... come on, I am training to be a covert spy. Do you think I have time for periods? Have you ever seen a tampon in the bathroom at the main house?" Mitch was taken aback by her openness. Willa shook her head, answering her own question. "I had an IUD inserted two years ago, when I came here, it stopped my menstruating and my ovulation. I didn't think that I could do all of this if I had cramps once a month." 

"So you can't get pregnant either?"

Willa shook her head again. "No." Willa laughed and pressed her cheek back against the stock of her gun. She exhaled and pulled the trigger, meeting her target with perfect precision. 

She moved her shoulder ever so slightly to the right, rotating her gun to her next target. She adjusted the scope and got ready to fire, when she heard Mitch's low, raspy whisper. "Well in that case, I'm gonna drown you in my cum tonight." 

A small whimper came out of Willa's mouth, as she looked up at Mitch, a shit eating grin spread across his face, as he set up to shoot her target.


	11. Day 62

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch take a day trip with Stan to the Ghost Protocol Training facilities, and Willa takes off for New York City to see someone from her past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: description of rape/sexual assault

"Will.. Will..." Mitch whispered and nudged her awake. "Hey, hey... it's me." She flinched backwards in her bed. She was clearly having a nightmare about the attack. Mitch wanted to leave even less. 

"What's going on? Why are you dressed?" She asked groggily.

"I heard Stan telling Aiden that he'd be gone for a couple of days so I went and slept in my room after you fell asleep."

"You're leaving?"

Mitch held up Joseph Heller's novel,  _Catch-22_. 

"You're going back to Ghost.." 

"Yea and I've gotta go. I told Stan that I'd be down in a minute, I was just stealing one of your books. I'll only be gone for a day."

"Be careful." She looked up at him with emotional eyes, and he nodded. 

"I will." Mitch leaned down and left a lingering, sad kiss on her lips. 

 _"I love you"_ was what she wanted to say but didn't. She watched him walk out the door, her book in his hand, and she sunk back into her pillow. It was still dark out. She glanced up at the bookcase on her wall and saw the space where the book had been. It was the first time that he had left in a month and she was anything but excited to go through the day without him. She decided she wouldn't. 

The perks of being Stan's niece and de facto daughter was that she had more free reign around here than basically any one else. She also had her Uncle's cellphone number. She waited for it to be light out and grabbed the burner phone that Stan had given her from the loose floor board in her bedroom. It was dead. Willa rolled her eyes and waited for it to charge. The phone finally turned on and she sat on the floor next to the outlet, composing a text to her uncle. 

 **Willa:** hey.. can you text Aiden or Campbell or someone and tell them to give me a personal day?

 **Stan:** everything ok, kid?

 **Willa:** yea, i just realized that last week was Dad's bday and I didn't go to the grave. I was going to drive up to NYC and visit.

 **Stan:** I'll be back tomorrow, want to wait and I'll come with u? 

 **Willa:** I'd like to go today if that's ok

 **Stan:** I'll call Aiden and tell him not to expect u today

Willa walked over to her closet and grabbed a tight black skirt with buttons down the front, a striped blue and white long sleeved top, her thigh-high fake suede black boots, and her heavier black bomber jacket. She heard the phone vibrate on her dresser and she walked over, her boots slumping around her calves as she hadn't tied them against her thighs yet.

 **Stan:** BMW is gassed up. Be back by tomorrow morning. Take ur phone with u. 

Willa tied her boots up, grabbed her keys out of their hiding place in the floor, and replaced the board. She walked on her tip-toes as not to let her noisy heels hit the wooden floors and wake up anyone in the house. It was barely 5:15 in the morning and everyone was pretty much still asleep. She walked down to the garage level of the house, which was restricted to everyone but her, Stan, and the other instructors, and unlocked the door. She turned over the engine of her E52 Z8 BMW convertible coup, a classic car that her father had owned, she had inherited upon his death and that Stan gave to her when she got her driver's license in high school. She pulled open the glove box and took her iPhone, charger, sunglasses and wallet out and laid them on the seat next to her. She plugged her iPhone in and watched the screen light up for the first time in ages. She pushed the button for the garage door and peeled out onto the gravel road that led away from The Barn and into downtown Williamsburg, Virginia. She hadn't left the premises by herself in a long time. 

She took the top down, regardless of the fact that it was only March and it was still cold, and enjoyed the passing scenery and fresh air on Interstate 95 going North to New York City. She typed out a quick text on her iPhone as she drove through early morning D.C. traffic. She got a " _see you at noon."_ text message in reply, and threw her phone back on the seat beside her. She admired the view of Manhattan as she crossed the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey into New York and made her way onto a familiar block. She parallel parked, got out of her car, locked it and walked up to the beautiful brownstone apartment across the street. She rang the buzzer and waited for a familiar face to open the door. 

"Hey Beth."

* * *

 

 Willa sat on the comfy couch and tried to remember the last time she had been in that room. It hadn't been even six months but it felt like it had been forever. 

"I'm not used to seeing you this time of year, Willa, what are you doing up here?"

Willa rubbed her arm and glanced around the room. "Did you have to cancel any appointments to fit me in?"

"Will, you're avoiding my question and eye contact. What's going on? Is my Dad okay?"

Willa sighed and looked at the girl in front of her. She was two years older than Willa and beautiful and tall, with platinum blonde hair and long legs. "Stan's fine, Beth." Willa told her cousin. 

"You're not fine though. Did something happen at The Barn?" Beth stared at her, waiting for Willa to stop being evasive. "You're the one who came up here, W. I'll cancel all my patients for the day if I have to, you're going to talk to me. You never just come up out of no where."

Willa stared down at her hands. She dug her fingernails under each other when she was nervous, a habit that Beth was surprised to see since Willa had been trained to not do it anymore. "We still have doctor-patient confidentiality, right? Even though I haven't seen you in a while?" 

"You ask me this every year, and the answer is always yes. These meetings stay off the record, there is no chart, and my Dad never finds out you saw me. What does he think you're doing up here anyway?" Beth asked her younger cousin, a girl that she grew up with as a sister when Willa moved into her house after her family died in the terror attacks on September 11th. 

"My Dad's birthday was last week and he thinks I'm down in the dumps about it, and I told him that I was going to bring flowers to their graves." Willa finally gave Beth a straight answer.

"Are you down in the dumps about it?" 

"Of course... but.." Willa sighed. She didn't know where to start. 

"Start from the beginning, W." Beth told her. 

"I met someone." 

Beth's face lit up. "At The Barn?" 

Willa nodded. "His name is Mitch, and B, he's the best I've ever seen. Stan has completely taken him under his wing and he's training him personally, like whisking him away for special sessions.."

"Wow, he really must be good then." Beth commented, a surprised look on her face. "Did something happen between you two? Did you get caught or something and he got kicked out or..?"

"No, no, no.. he's great. I'm really happy with him and we've only been _together_ , _together_  for a week or so. He's not why I'm here... well, I mean, your Dad took him on some special assignment before the sun even came up this morning, so his lack of being around is why I'm here, but  _he_ and our relationship are not the issue." Willa was babbling.

"What is?" Beth inquired, watching her cousin's bizarre mannerisms. She wasn't acting like herself at all. 

Willa rubbed her hand against her nose and mouth and scratched at the corner of her eye. She wasn't ready to talk about this. "About..." She cleared her throat and sighed. "About a month and a half ago, these three guys tried to rape me in the shower at the main house."

"WHAT?! Willa.. shit, what are you talking about? Does my Dad know?"

"What do you think?" Willa looked up at Beth with a deadpan look on her face. 

"What happened?" Beth fought the urge to scrap her professionalism and embrace her beloved adopted-sister and best friend. 

"There were these three guys, Dan Brunski was the main aggressor. Peter Collins and Jacob Clemens were his... lackey's essentially. Clemens being much more involved and much less remorseful than Collins... and anyway, Dan Brunski clearly is the kind of rich white kid who has never been told 'no' in his life and he either liked me or just wanted to fuck me or hates women and wanted to brag about conquering me or was just a regular old sociopath, I really have no idea. But he kept making all these really aggressive advances on me and I was not giving him the time of day. I had definitely humiliated him a few different times in front of multiple other trainees, and he just, I don't know, really internalized it all."

"So what happened?"

"Well, first he accused me of sleeping with Stan and said that was the only reasonable explanation as to how I got into the program. That pissed me off so I punched him in the face. I gave him a bloody nose and it wasn't a big deal."

"Your idea that assault is not a big deal is so far from the reality of what a big deal is, Will." Beth interjected. 

Willa shrugged. "He tried to make a few moves on me, cornering me in the woods or trying to slide his hand up my thigh during class, and I shut that shit down every time... Then Mitch got to The Barn and we had this weird instant connection." 

"And Dan was watching you more closely than the other trainees?" Beth had seen the behavior before. 

Willa nodded. "Yea, I guess he was. Honestly, he probably realized that there was something going on between Mitch and I before Mitch and I even did. But one morning, Dan snuck into my room while I was still asleep, he covered my mouth and tried to get under my blankets with me to rape me." The breath hitched in Beth's throat and her stomach did a flip. It was one thing when her patients told her these things, but it was another thing when the story was coming from someone she loved dearly. "I stopped him, but he was like 'I see the way you and Mitch are with each other. If you're willing to suck his dick, why won't you suck mine. I know you're a slut. I won't make you beg for it.' and whatever. I threw his ass out of my room, but Mitch sleeps literally across the hall from me, and that was when he knew something was wrong."

"Willa, this Dan guy sounds like he's done this before, how is he at The Barn? How'd he get through the vetting?" Beth asked. 

"I don't know." Willa shook her head. "But later that day, him and Collins, Clemens and a guy named Brian Keller, tried to attack me in the woods. Mitch stopped it before anything could happen. A consequence, not related to the attack, got Brian Keller kicked out of the program no more than ten minutes later, and Dan blamed Mitch and I." 

"So he became more angry, and it accelerated his actions, huh?"

"Later that night, I was taking a shower and I hadn't been in there for more than a few minutes but it was late because Mitch and I had been working out together late and no one else was in there, Dan, Clemens, and Collins.. well, Dan and Clemens... Collins was the lookout. They came in the bathroom, ambushed me in the shower.." Willa's eyebrow furrowed as she thought back to the incident in detail. "Clemens held... he held my arms back against the wall and Dan stood in front of me, touching my naked body with his hands. He was getting undressed and telling me that him and Clemens were going to take turns and I was going to love it and if I didn't that they would kill Mitch and then they'd kill me." Beth had tears in her eyes as she listened to the story. "Dan... he.." Willa wiped a tear from her own eye. "He stuck a finger inside of me, while Clemens covered my mouth and hit me across the face every time I tried to scream. I knew, I knew I couldn't take the two of them on at once, so I had to wait. Finally, I became more compliant and Clemens left so that Dan could rape me. I got on my knees in front of him, and he.. he put his dick in my hand and made me stroke him while he was hard..." Willa shut her eyes and shook her head, tears streamed down her face. "That was when I heard the bathroom door open and I knew it had to have been Mitch, everyone else was asleep, and we had worked out so hard earlier that we both had to shower or else it would've been disgusting the next day."

Beth nodded, and Willa continued. "Dan grabbed me off the floor, pulled me against him, and covered my mouth. I tried to climb the walls but they were too slippery, I tried to hurt him and kick at the curtain, but he restrained me. I think Mitch may have already been suspicious by Collins and Clemens just... loitering in the bathroom, and he knew it was my towel.... I kicked the tile hard enough that it made a noise and Mitch pounced into action. He held off Clemens and Collins, which gave me the opportunity to finally take on Dan." 

"What'd Mitch do?" Beth asked, her face portraying how devastated she was. 

"He broke Clemens' wrist and knocked him out, and he broke seven of Collins' teeth against a sink. He broke the sink with Collins' face." 

"Did he help you with Dan?" 

Willa shook her head. "I didn't need it. By the time Mitch got through the other two, I was bashing Dan's head against the shower stall. I broke his cheekbone and temporal bone."

"Good." Beth gritted her teeth. 

"Mitch took care of me that night. He literally dressed me in his clothes, put me in his bed, sat in a chair in the corner of the room, and watched me sleep the rest of the night." Willa remembered fondly and painfully how wonderful he had been that night. 

"What happened when my Dad found out?" 

"I never told him. The only people who actually know what happened are me, Mitch, Brunski, Clemens and Collins." 

"You never told Stan?" Beth asked again. 

Willa huffed, a part of her thought that Beth would understand why she had kept the secret. "Your Dad raised me.. he's in charge of my fate as a CIA agent, do you know how hard it would've been to tell him that story and have him never look at me the same again or think that I couldn't handle the job. This shit happens to women in the field, Beth. It just does. They've dealt with it and so have I." Willa raised her voice at Beth. 

"Are you dealing with it though, Will?" Beth raised her voice right back. "What happened to Dan and the other two?"

"Dan had to get facial reconstructive surgery.. multiple surgeries from what I hear. Collins and Clemens were gone for a while, but now that they can both fight again, they're back at The Barn."

"So you're just living with your attackers?! Wilhelmina, holy shit. This is insane." Beth was getting more and more upset. 

"Beth..."

"What about Mitch? I'm surprised he hasn't told Stan.... He has to know how ridiculous this is."

Willa lowered her eyes from Beth. "...He's wanted to tell Stan from the start, but he hasn't because I asked him not to."

"That's bullshit, Will, and you know it."

"Beth, you're losing your therapist hat right now.." Willa warned her cousin. 

Beth shook her head and tried to regain her composure. She leaned forward and looked at Willa. "What happens when you try to have a relationship with another man, Willa? Like Mitch, for example."

"Mitch and I finally had sex about a week ago."

"How'd it go?" Beth knew that Willa was about to prove her point. 

"It was hard... at first, but Mitch.. he kept me in the moment and he was tender and he was there holding me and making sure I knew it was just us and he would stop if I needed." Willa divulged her secrets to Beth. 

"What happens when Mitch wants to be a little rougher in the bedroom? Maybe do it doggy style or something less 'tender'? What happens then Willa? Are you having any side effects from what happened? Panic attacks? Flashbacks? Nightmares?" 

"Yes."

"Which?"

"......All of those."

Beth sighed. "Oh, W... fuck." She got up and hugged Willa, then sat on the couch next to her. "If this happened a month and a half ago, why are you only telling me now?"

Willa leaned back against the arm of the couch, and looked at Beth. "I thought that there would be some improvement by now, and there just hasn't been and I want to be with Mitch. I am falling head over heels in love with him, but I am never going to be able to give him everything of me, and he is always going to walk on eggshells around me, if I can't figure this shit out." Willa wiped a tear from falling down her cheek. 

"You've gotta get rid of those guys.. if Dan comes back.." 

"I know." Willa confirmed that she understood that no good could or would come from Dan Brunski returning to The Barn. 

"Getting rid of your attackers is the first step. Coming back up here and talking to me in a more regular fashion would be a good second step.. the rest of it, Will, unfortunately, the rest of it is just time and talking. Talking about it, confronting what happened, whether it be with Stan, or Mitch, or me, or someone else, not letting it be a secret.. it'll lose it's power over you. Communication will also help in regards to being intimate with Mitch. Be explicit with what you expect and what you want and what you're struggling with."

"And then time."

"You're just going to have to wait. 'Time heals all wounds', you know?" Beth reiterated an old saying, and took her cousin's hands in her own. "W, I am so sorry that this happened to you. I know they prepare you for the possibility of it happening in the field, but at training?" Beth shook her head. "It's not fair. I could kill those guys."

"You sound like Mitch." Willa said with a small and short chuckle. 

Beth leaned back on the couch, copying Willa. "What's he like?"

"Intense... and smart and so. fucking. sexy. Beth, oh my god." Willa couldn't help but laugh.

"How old is he?" 

"My age. A few months younger, but he doesn't act it. He's been through some shit too. I don't know. He's amazing. He's kind and witty and he has a smile that just knocks me to the ground, every time." Willa was grinning. "You know, Easter is coming up..."

"Dad's doing the cover story exercise?" 

"I think so. I told Mitch about it and we thought we'd come up here for the break. Maybe you could meet him." Willa offered. 

"I'd love that." Beth glanced at the clock. "Oh shit.. I have someone waiting in the waiting room." 

Willa shook her head. "It's okay. I have to get to the cemetery before it closes anyway. I'll see you in a couple weeks?" 

Beth nodded and hugged Willa. 

Willa drove around Manhattan for an hour, revisiting old haunts and hangouts, but avoiding the Lower East Side, where she grew up. She brought flowers to the 9/11 memorial fountains and placed them on her parents and brother's names. She got back in her car and drove to the cemetery. She placed flowers at their graves and sat to talk to them for a while, then got back on the road. It was late and she didn't want to have to get a hotel and drive early in the morning to get back before shooting range at 0700. Her iPhone rang and "S" popped up on her caller I.D. She picked it up.

"Hey."

" _Hey. How was it?"_ Stan asked through the speaker.

"Fine. Thanks for letting me go. I needed it. Talked to them, got some pizza, I feel re-energized." Willa only told half the story. 

" _Anytime. You on your way back?"_ Stan usually used nicknames for Willa, just like Beth did, but he wasn't so Willa knew that Stan wasn't alone. 

"Yea, I just passed into Maryland on 95. You?"

_"Just got in the car. I'll see you tomorrow then."_

"Yep." 

Stan hung up the call. Willa shifted the car into fifth gear and sped back to The Barn. 

She pulled onto the gravel road back to The Barn behind Stan's black SUV. She smiled because she knew that Mitch was inside. She pulled into her spot in the garage and threw her iPhone, wallet, and charger back in the glove compartment. Stan shook his head at Willa as he got out of his own car. It was so much easier to hide the truth when none of the recruits knew that Willa had access to a car and they did not. Mitch stepped out and tried to act surprised, although, he was surprised since Willa never mentioned that the classic BMW in the garage was hers, or at least, hers to drive. She pocketed her keys, nodded at Mitch and Stan, and walked inside. 

"How does Willa have a car here?" Mitch asked Stan as they followed her up the stairs. 

"She's been here for three years, Rapp. She gets some amenities that the rest of you will eventually earn as well." Stan lied. She had a car because she was his niece and, unlike the other recruits who got to go home on breaks, The Barn essentially had been Willa's home for the past few years. Letting her keep a car there was the least Stan could do. "Don't worry about it, Rapp. Just go to bed. You did well today." 

"Thank you, sir." 

Mitch headed off after Willa. He looked at his watch. It was just past midnight.


	12. Day 63 & Day 74

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa receive some disturbing news.

Mitch walked into Willa's room and saw her replacing a wooden floorboard under her bed. She didn't turn, she knew it was him. 

"I can't believe I never knew that existed." Mitch said, glancing at the floorboard hiding spot, as he placed his duffle bag on her desk and leaned against her doorframe. 

She walked over and pulled him inside, closing and locking the door behind her. She held his hands in her own and kissed him lightly on the lips. "I missed you today. I thought you were supposed to stay the night there tonight." 

"Me too, but Stan decided early this morning after his phone kept ringing that he wanted to come back tonight, even if it was late. Now I'm thinking that had to do with you?" Mitch sat at her desk chair and watched as she hung up her bomber jacket. She looked sexy as could be in the outfit she was wearing. He loved her in those boots, they always made him want to slide his hands up her thighs. 

"I guess it had to do with me." She said, as she walked over and sat in his lap, hooking her arms around his neck. 

"Tell me about your day." Mitch said as he slipped a hand under her shirt and gripped the skin on her bare stomach. His other hand rested against her ass, holding her in place on his lap. He kissed her neck gently. 

"The last place that I wanted to be was here, alone, without you all day, so I asked Stan to give me the day off, which he did, and I went up to New York." 

Mitch looked at her sideways. That was not at all what he thought she was going to say when he asked her about her day. "You went home?" Mitch picked her up in his arms, cradling her against his chest, and placed her on the bed. She sat up and watched as he knelt in front of her and untied the leather laces around her thighs, then worked the boots down, unzipping them at the calves, and pulling them off her feet. It was so seductive watching him undress her so slowly.

She sighed. "I told Stan that I was sad because last week was my Dad's birthday and I hadn't been to his grave in a long time and it had me all out of sorts.."

Mitch interrupted her as he worked on her right boot. "Is that true? Was his birthday last week?"

Willa nodded. "But that wasn't really what was bothering me. I mean, it was but.. anyway, I went up to see Beth." 

"Who's Beth?" Mitch asked, leaving kisses on Willa's knees. 

"Beth is my best friend... and cousin. She's basically my sister. She is Stan's youngest daughter."

"Stan has kids?" Mitch asked as he walked over to his duffle and pulled a clean t-shirt out.

Willa nodded. "He has two sons and Beth, and then me, I guess."

"How old is Beth?" Mitch asked, pulling his shirt off and throwing it at her desk chair. 

"Two years older than us..." Willa paused. "What are you doing?" 

Mitch hooked his hands around the backs of Willa's knees and yanked her forward, standing between her legs. "Getting us ready for bed." Mitch smiled and pulled Willa's shirt off. She had foregone a bra that day. He unzipped her skirt on the side and pulled it off. He handed her his shirt and she yanked it over her head. He pulled his pants down and turned off the lights, getting in bed with Willa. "So, why'd you go to see Beth?" He asked, leaving his arm extended over the pillows waiting for her to cuddle up to him.

She nuzzled into him and continued her story. "I just, that nightmare I had last night... I needed to talk to someone and I couldn't keep burdening you with what happened just to then tell you that I wasn't going to do anything about it.."

"You're not burdening me... and you told Stan's daughter. Do you really think she won't tell Stan?" Mitch questioned. 

"Not unless she wants to lose her license." Mitch looked confused. "She's a psychiatrist. She cleared a two hour block of her patient's today just to see me. I go down there every September and we talk about my parents and my brother, Brandon, and stuff like that. Usually once a year is all I need in terms of therapy..."

Mitch cut her off. "You always say you're doing better, have you been lying?" He propped himself up on his elbow to look down at her face.

Willa sighed and looked up at him. "Not lying, just.."

"No, Willa, if I ask you if you're doing okay and you say yes but you aren't actually, that's a lie!" Mitch raised his voice and sat up fully.

Willa sat up too. "Are you seriously going to yell at me right now?"

Mitch opened his mouth to yell at her some more and then shook his head and closed his lips. Willa rested her hands on his knees, and he bent down to kiss both. "How much did you tell Beth?"

"Everything. I told her about us and I told her about the attack." 

"And what'd she say? How much does she know actually? Does she know what this place is or what you and Stan do here?"

Willa nodded. "Stan never wanted his kids to be helpless, so we'd all come here in the summers growing up, like in high school, and we'd train with the trainees. So yea, she knows what I'm doing here. At least to an extent." 

"So what'd she say?" 

"She was angry... and upset and she agreed with you that I can't keep just living with the men who attacked me like everything is normal."

Mitch felt vindicated. "So are we going to tell Stan what happened?" 

"Yea, maybe... I just have to find the right time."

Mitch pulled her closer to him. "I'll be here whenever you decide that time is."

Willa nodded and chewed on her lip. She pushed against his chest and leaned him back against the pillows, resting her own body back on top of him. She was relieved. She was back with the man that she was mad for and had gotten to go home for a day and see her best friend and talk about the things that she was struggling with. She fell asleep in Mitch's arms that night content.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

"No, baby, the rotation has to be more like this." Mitch walked up behind Willa and extended her arm more. "If you keep it tucked in so much you're not going to get the same amount of speed or force or momentum."

"Yea, but I'm also not going to accidentally lose the knife and stab like an innocent bystander or something." Mitch chuckled and lowered his hand down her arm.

"That won't happen. You'll get the hang of it, you just have to keep going. It took me months to get it down perfectly."

Willa popped her hip out, cocked her head to the side and frowned. "Months? Really, Mitch?" 

Mitch smirked and shook his head. "Knife throwing is a good skill to have, you'll never know when you can use it but when the opportunity presents itself, I promise you won't regret this."

A smirk broke out of Willa's face. "I regret many things in my life, Mitch, but I.. actually think learning how to throw daggers will be one of them." She grinned from ear to ear. 

"Oh you're just being difficult tonight, huh?" Mitch wrapped her up in his arms and pressed his lips against hers. They were completely alone in the gym and knew that they could get away with being affectionate out in the open. Mitch brought her down to the floor and hovered over her, leaving wet kisses down her jaw and neck, as she dug her nails into his biceps.

"Wait... wait, I hear something." Willa grabbed the small dagger off the floor next to her and rose slowly, Mitch getting up behind her. 

"Hello? Mitch? Willa?" 

Mitch stepped in front of Willa, blocking her body with his. "What do you want, Collins?" Mitch asked the man who's teeth he had broken the night of Willa's attack. 

Collins spotted the pair and walked over. "Listen, I know that you.. you made it clear to stay away and I want nothing to do with either of you. I'm sorry I ever got involved in that whole thing and hurt you, Willa." Collins tried to talk to her, but Mitch blocked his view again. She wrapped her fingers around his sides and pressed her forehead against Mitch's sweaty shirt. She didn't even care, she just didn't want to look at Collins. 

"You clearly didn't get how serious I was when I told you that I would kill you if you came near her again." Mitch squeezed the handle of the throwing dagger in his hand. 

"No, I got it. I just thought you guys should know.... Brunski is coming back." Collins broke the news. 

"What did you say?" Mitch stepped forward. 

"How do you know?" Willa finally spoke up, walking up towards Collins, dangling two daggers in between her fingers. 

"One of the instructors, Campbell, he told me this morning."

"When is he coming back?" Willa asked, the rage building like a lump in her throat. 

"After we all get back from Spring Break..."

Willa shook her head, and inhaled deeply, turning to look at Mitch. 

"I just thought you deserved to know and not be surprised. I'm sorry, Willa." Collins took a step forward, and everyone moved. 

Willa quickly turned the knives in her hand and pressed them up against Collins' thick neck. Mitch had leapt forward, ready to take the large man out, but Willa's reaction timing was instantaneous. 

She took a step forward, the razor sharp knives digging a little further into Collins' flesh. "Leave." Willa whispered from behind her teeth as she scowled at him. Collins backed away slowly, touching his throat to see a small drop of blood on his fingers. He rushed out of the gym leaving Willa and Mitch behind. Mitch watched as Willa's shoulders moved up and down as she breathed heavily. She looked down at the red blood on her knife and dropped it on the floor. 

"I wanna kill him."


	13. Day 75, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The recruits get released for a weeklong Spring break. Mitch and Willa go to New York.

"Alright, Willa, what do you have?" Stan asked, standing in the front of their classroom. Willa had done this three years in a row now and already knew that her cover story worked. "I am going to go up to Manhattan to see my friends from Columbia and just like the past two years, my cover is that I work for the State Department and work overseas a lot and that's why I am never all that accessible and cannot talk about my work in detail." 

"And as always, that works for me.. Enjoy your break." Stan said, as Willa sat down and folded her arms, waiting for the next person to share their cover story. "Remember, the cover story needs to be good enough that it could be real but won't elicit too many unanswerable questions from even your nosiest family member. It's for your protection, their protection and the protection of the Agency... Who's next? Julian?" 

Julian stood. "I am also going up to Westchester, New York to see my parents, and they think I am coming back from a Syrian relief mission to see them for five days... Then I leave to go back."

"Have you been to Syria?" Stan asked.

"No, sir."

"Then how are you going to answer questions that they have about what you've seen over there?" Stan pushed, trying to find the ways in which Julian's cover could be blown.

"I was going to read the New York Times on the train up, sir. My parents aren't naturally inquisitive people. If I embellish what I've read in the papers, that will be enough to upset my mother and force my father to drop the subject altogether. Plus, now that I can speak some Arabic, I think they'll be convinced." 

"And if they want to see pictures?"

"I'm not over their to take pictures, sir. They can google what Aleppo looks like these days themselves." Julian spoke dryly and mouthed off all the time. Stan wasn't fond of him, but Willa always thought he was funny. She chuckled in her seat as Julian answered all of Stan's questions in a monotone voice

Stan shook his head. "Fine, you can go. Sit down." He scanned the room. "Clemens." 

"I am going home to Wisconsin to see my family. I was an attorney in Madison before I came here, so I'll tell them that I have been trying to pass the Bar here in Virginia so that I can become a Supreme Court lawyer. They'd understand why I haven't spoken to them if I was studying."

"You'd have a better chance of me letting you go to Mexico and hire prostitutes than you going home with that shit excuse for a cover story. Sit down. Think of something better and you can leave, but until then: no Wisconsin for you." Clemens raised his hands in the air in front of him, gesturing like he didn't know what was wrong with that story. Stan pointed to Rob, and Clemens sat back down. Rob explained how he wasn't leaving town because his parents were on vacation so he was planning on trolling D.C. bars for girls. Stan reminded him that he still needed a cover story, and made Rob sit down. "Mitch."

Mitch stood, folding his arms in front of him. Willa tried to hide her excitement over the way that his hands, folded under, made his biceps look even bigger. She blinked a few times, unable to keep the grin off of her face, and quietly put her head in her arms on the table in front of her. "You good, Will?" Julian leaned over and whispered.

"Mhmm. Just tired." She mumbled without raising her head. 

"I'm going up to see my brother and he thinks that I have been traveling for the past year and a half, but before I actually did that, I got a job at the State Department, so I was going to use that as my cover too."

"Alright, very good. You can go." Stan said, then moved on to the last two trainees. Mitch sat back down and looked at Willa, head still buried in her arms, and chuckled to himself. "The shuttle leaves in a half hour and it will bring you to downtown D.C. You can get to the train station or airports or car rental places from there, and we'll see you back here in a week. For those of you who did not get permission, I leave tonight, I will drive you downtown if you can come up with a better cover before 1900 hours. You're dismissed."

Everyone began to disperse, and Mitch watched as Stan walked up to Willa and Julian.

"Have a good break, Julian. Willa can I have a word?" 

Willa nodded and stopped. "What's up?"

"Are you sure that you don't want to come down with us? I know Meredith and the boys would love to see you."

"Yea, I haven't seen my friends in so long, I just wanted to hang out."

"Are you going to see Beth when you're up there?" Stan asked about his daughter. 

"Oh, Beth isn't going to be in North Carolina with you guys?" Willa lied. She knew Beth was going to be in New York because she was introducing Beth to Mitch this weekend.

"She was supposed to but couldn't get out of work.... if I can't convince you to come to the Outer Banks, can I at least convince you to take your car up? You don't have to take the train."

"I wanna take the train, Stan. It's fine." She told him, not divulging that she wanted to take the train because Mitch was taking the train.

"Alright, kiddo. I'll see you in a week then."

"Say hi to Aunt Mere and everyone else for me." She smiled.

* * *

 

She spotted Mitch, Julian and a few other trainees in the waiting room of D.C.'s Union Station. She looked up at the board and saw that the Amtrak train to New York City's Penn Station was finally boarding. She picked up her bag, throwing it over her shoulder, and handed the ticket agent her boarding pass. She glanced to a parallel boarding line and saw Mitch. She bashfully smiled and took her ticket back. She sat down in a two-seater against the window and placed her bag on the seat next to her. 

"I love that you pick the one that doesn't have any seats behind it." 

Willa looked up at grinned. "I like to know what's going on around me. It's not like I can just take the spy hat off.." She fake whispered and then watched as Mitch stuffed their bags in the overhead compartments, his shirt and jacket lifting just enough to tease her with his abs and happy trail. Just enough to turn her on. She bit her lip and ran her hand up her leg as Mitch sat back down. He saw the desire in her eyes.

"Oh... someone's in a mood." Mitch said with a grin as he rested his left hand on her knee. 

"I'm just excited and you look so good, and I.." She couldn't even finish her sentence without kissing him. She pressed her body against his, feeling his hand run up her leg and just under the hem of her short navy blue leather skirt. She felt his right hand hook it's fingers into her hair as he pulled her harder against his lips. His tongue slipped in between her lips as she slipped her fingers through the neck of his button-embellished gray thermal shirt and dug her fingers into his shoulder. Mitch stopped to catch his breath, and pressed his forehead against hers. 

"Oh god." He whispered between huffs. "Don't bite your lip at me like that. This outfit is killing me enough as is." Mitch grinned and shook his head at her. She was wearing a short and tight navy blue leather skirt, a loose and semi-sheer marled gray t-shirt, gray knee-high socks, black booties and a black lace bra that you could see through her shirt; her favorite bomber jacket was hanging on a hook next to the window. 

Willa grinned from ear to ear as she rubbed his thigh over his khaki pants, purposefully trying to still turn him on. "But I'm just so excited about our week away. I want to get started now." She pouted and fake whined. 

"Willa, trust me, if it wasn't the middle of the morning and this train wasn't packed with people, you'd be in my lap with your tight little pussy riding my cock right now." 

"Promise?" Willa bit her lip since she couldn't be biting his. 

"Promise." Mitch pulled her in for a peck on the cheeks and then leaned back into his seat, closing his eyes and holding her hand in her lap so that she couldn't rub up on him anymore. He needed to calm down or else he probably would find a way to fuck Willa right then. 

"Shit..." 

Mitch opened his eyes and felt Willa yank her hand out of his. "What?" He looked at her and she was staring out the window. 

"Of all the cars on this train, he had to get on this one? Are you kidding?" She whispered, while pointing in the direction of the aisle in the middle of the car. Mitch saw Julian placing his bag in the compartment above his seat. Mitch nodded at Julian and Julian nodded back, then sat down on the opposite end of the train car. 

" _All aboard. The 9:13AM train from Union Station, District of Columbia to Montreal, Quebec, making stops in Baltimore, Dover, Philadelphia, Trenton, New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and finally Montreal, will be departing the station in approximately three minutes. All aboard. Conductors, please check your signals._ " The announcement broke over the speakers. 

"Is it weird that we're sitting together or do you think he saw anything?" Willa asked, worry spreading across her face. 

Mitch shook his head. "I think it's fine... and Julian is your friend, right?"

"I mean, yea, but you never know what people will do."

"It'll be fine." Mitch gave her a quick smile. Then stood back up. "You want your book?"

Willa shook her head. "I'm going to catch up with the news on my phone." She watched as Mitch reached back up into the compartment, his shirt lifting again, and dropped Alexandre Dumas'  _The Count of Monte Cristo_ on the seat, the latest book that Willa had given him to read. "You are seriously going to have to sit down. I'm gonna maul you, and now I really can't since Julian is sitting right over there." Mitch grinned, closed the compartment and took off his jacket. "Oh, seriously? You're doing this on purpose." Willa huffed and sat back in her seat, feeling the train jolt forward as it started on its journey. 

Mitch tried to rest his coat on top of Willa's silky bomber, but both ended up falling off the hook and onto the floor with a thud. "Sorry, babe. Do you want your phone?" Mitch asked as he bent over and picked up their jackets. 

"Yes please." She said as she watched him hang his coat on the hook first. 

He fished in her pockets and pulled out her phone and keys. "Why do you have so many keys?" Mitch asked, confusion spreading on his face as he saw her take them out of his hand. He hung her jacket on top of his and sat back down next to her. 

"Well, this is to the garage." She began flipping through the keys, about a dozen in total. "These are the keys to Stan's office and then the master key to all of the buildings at The Barn. This is to Beth's house, and this is to the Hurley's house in Virginia, where I lived. This is the key to my safety deposit box and my P.O. Box. This is the key to my Dad's hangar, and this is the one to the safe that holds all the car keys, and this is the one for the LES apartment." She tucked the keys back into her pocket after listing them off. 

"What?" 

Willa laughed. "What can I say? I'm welcome a lot of places."

"Your Dad's hangar and what Lower East Side apartment?" Mitch looked confused. 

Willa inhaled and then looked at Mitch. "So you saw the BMW the other night. It was my Dad's. He collected vintage cars and cars he thought were cool. I inherited all of them, and Stan picked out the BMW from the lot and gave it to me when I got my driver's license in high school, and it's just the one I use the most often. I was actually thinking that if you and Steven wanted, I would bring you to the hangar tomorrow, let you see the cars... maybe take one of them out and we could drive it the rest of the week?" 

Mitch smirked. "Steve would lose his shit if you did that." Willa smiled and nodded. "What apartment though?"

Willa pursed her lips and pulled at her socks. Mitch took her hand in his when he saw her fidgeting. She smiled up at him again. "I still own the apartment that I grew up in."

"Really?"

She nodded. "It's this big two story penthouse in this tall, old building downtown and my Mom grew up there, and when her Dad died, she got the deed, and when my Mom died, I got the deed.... I literally haven't been there in years though. It's fully furnished and everything, I just can't bring myself to sell it." 

Mitch half frowned. "Did you live there in college?" 

"No, I rented a place in South Harlem, closer to campus. The only people who have been there since I was in high school are the cleaning crew that I hired to come in once a month and dust and kill the spiders, whatever."

"Do you ever plan on moving in there?" 

"Maybe one day. It's a beautiful building and a nice area. We can drive by it if you want." 

Mitch shrugged, not wanting to make her do anything she was uncomfortable with. "It's up to you... What do you want to do while we're up here?" 

A smile spread back across Willa's face, and she let out an excited moan. "Ugh, everything. Well, I want to hang out with Steven, and I promised I'd hang out with one of my girlfriends from college, so you can spend the day with Steven that day. I want pizza from John's on Bleeker, meatballs from The Meatball Shop, cake from Herb in Chelsea, vietnamese food from Jimmy's downtown, Shake Shack... oh my god, I read that there is a Shake Shack in Penn Station now, if we could make that our first stop, I'd love you forever." Willa didn't even realize what she said as she rambled on about all that she wanted to do while she was home.

Mitch smiled, but didn't say anything. He wanted to kiss her but could feel Julian watching from a distance. "So basically, you want to eat?"

Willa pressed her lips together tightly, furrowed her brow and nodded. "I am so sick of the food at The Barn."

Mitch laughed and went to kiss her, but stopped half way through, realizing what he was doing. Instead, he leaned past her and pulled the curtain closed. He hoped that was subtle enough, and that Julian hadn't caught his near slip. He licked his lips and leaned back in the seat, reclining the chair back. "We can definitely do all of that." 

"I also would like to have a lot of sex." She looked at him seriously. 

"Steve's going to love that." Mitch laughed. 

"Yea, we may have to get a hotel room.." She said as she reached for her phone and began scrolling through The Associated Press' news app.

 


	14. Day 75, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa make it to New York City for their break from The Barn, and indulge in their first few hours of uninterrupted alone time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SMUT.

"Ugh, it's so good. I'm so happy." Willa threw her head back in ecstasy as Mitch watched her and grinned. "How's your burger?" 

"Really good." He laughed as she took another massive bite from her SmokeShack Shake Shack burger, sitting across the repurposed wooden table in the crowded restaurant in the depths of New York's Penn Station. "Steve is going to meet us at Cipriani Club downtown in three hours. He left a key with his doorman for us to get in and drop off our stuff." Mitch read the text message on Willa's iPhone, closed it, and slid it back over to her across the table. "What do you want to do for three hours before dinner?"

"Have sex." Willa said in a normal speaking tone, eliciting a look from the construction worker sitting next to her eating his own burger. She stared straight at Mitch with a smirk.

"I don't understand what we are still doing here eating burgers then..." Mitch also ignored the close vicinity of the other burger-eating patrons. Willa laughed hard. He loved seeing her so carefree and happy. "Should we go?" Willa nodded and grabbed her bag. "The cabs are upstairs?" Mitch hadn't been to Penn Station since college, and couldn't remember the layout. 

"Oh, honey, we're not taking a cab. You're with a New Yorker. We take the subway."

"So smug." Mitch laughed and pecked Willa on the lips. 

They stood on the subway, Mitch holding on to the above railing, and Willa wrapping her arms around his waist, her head buried against his chest, the two of them swaying together with the movements of the train. Mitch could feel how relaxed Willa was in comparison to how she was when she was at The Barn and was thinking about all the shitty things that had happened to her there. She glanced up at him, his sweet upturned nose, his pronounced jawline, the veins in his neck and his sweeping hair. He glanced down, smiled at her, kissed her on the cheek, and went back to reading the advertisements on the train. She smiled from ear to ear and buried her face back into his chest, feeling him squeeze her in reaction to her nuzzle. 

They got off at the Fulton Street subway stop and began walking to Steven's building, where he was putting them up for the week. Mitch had her hand clasped in his as she walked next to him, a smile spread across her face, leading the way and getting her fast New York legs back into action. He squeezed her hand and she looked up at him, slowing down her pace. 

"I'm not used to us getting to be a normal couple." Mitch said, a subtle smile resting on his lips. 

"I know what you mean, talking about sex and holding hands in public. It's nice though."

"Yea, I kept checking around us on the subway to see who would catch us or who was watching..."

"And no one was watching because New Yorkers don't give a fuck about what you're doing on the train?" Willa completed his sentence. 

Mitch laughed. "Basically. I've been looking over my shoulder for so long that I have got to learn to relax every once in a while."

"I could help.." Willa said with a smirk, as she pushed him out of the current of people walking on the sidewalk and pressed her fingers into his chest. She leaned up and locked her lips to his, quickly escalating it by pushing her tongue into his mouth and massaging his with it. Mitch pulled her close to him and enveloped her with his body. Mitch pulled back and bit his upper lip. 

"How much longer until we're at Steve's?" He asked. 

* * *

 

He dropped their bags on the floor and closed the door. She walked ahead of him, looking around and admiring Steven's big New York apartment. 

"Your brother really  _does_ do well for himself, huh?" She said, staring at the vaulted ceilings and floor to ceiling windows, and taking off her jacket, leaving it on a chair.

Mitch came up from behind her and pulled her wrist so she would come back to him. She stumbled towards him with a smile, and he scooped her up in his arms. She squealed as he kissed her, taking off his shoes with his feet, and walked to the couch. He laid her down, pulled her shoes off and threw them on the floor. He watched her face as he pulled her right sock off slowly, kissing her feet and ankles as he threw the sock behind him. He repeated the action with the left sock. 

"You are killing me with this going slow shit." She said with a grin. 

Mitch cocked his head to the side and began undressing. She followed suit and soon they were both naked and he was on top of her on the black leather couch. She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her nails into his hair, lightly tugging and moaning as he kissed her jaw and neck. 

"I've wanted you inside of me so badly ever since you put our bags away on the train. Your happy trail and abs. God, you are so sexy." She whispered into his ear as he bit at her neck. 

"Fuck, Willa." Mitch pulled her body closer to his in one swift motion. "You want my cock inside you?" He asked, a smirk breaking across his face. 

Willa shook her head. "More than anything." 

Mitch didn't need further convincing. He pressed the head of his cock, dripping with precum, against her already wet opening, and moaned as he pushed himself inside. He loved how tight she was when he didn't stretch her out at all. She exhaled deeply and gripped the cushion on the back of the couch. Mitch pumped slowly in and out of her, watching her face, as she watched his length filling her up. 

"You like watching me fuck you?" He asked, leaning over to sneak in a greedy and hungry kiss. 

"So much. You're so big.. ahh... and so thick... ahh oh god... and you look so good when you're fucking me. ahhh Mitch, fuck." She could barely get the sentence out, because after every other word, Mitch pushed in a little deeper. He pushed down on her hips as he picked up his rhythm. He reached down and began rubbing her clit. She snatched his hand away and pulled it up to massage her breast instead. Mitch slowed and looked at her confused. 

"You okay?" He asked as he came to a stop. 

Willa squirmed underneath him, not wanting the friction to end. "You can go down on me later."

"I can get you to finish now.." Mitch offered.

Willa shook her head. "I don't want to wait for me to orgasm."

"I do."

She licked her lips. "I don't. Sometimes a girl just wants a good, old-fashioned fucking. I don't want to have to wait to feel you cum inside of me, Mitch. I want you to fuck me and fill my pussy with your cum." She looked serious and Mitch's breath hitched in the back of his throat. "Make it up to me later, fuck my brains out now."

Mitch grinned mischievously and picked his rhythm back up, thrusting in and out of her as he leaned over to kiss him, and she left scratch marks on his shoulder blades. She ground roughly against his dick, wanting more of him inside of her. "Harder." She whispered in his ear. Mitch straightened back out and began thrusting into her with more intensity, pushing down on her pointy hipbones to keep her in place. "Oh god, Mitch, yes. Just like that." She yelled. He watched as she reached her hands above her, anchoring herself with the arm of the couch, and her tits bouncing with his thrusts. "Oh god, deeper, please baby. I want all of you." Mitch loved this dirty talking side of her. 

He looked down and saw his dick coated in her juices and his thrusts became quicker and more vicious. He furrowed his brow and leaned down, breathing in her skin. She moaned in his ear and ran her fingers through his hair and purposefully contracted her walls around his cock. "Oh holy fuck." He whispered as he felt her walls tighten even further around him. His thrusts got sloppy and he began panting and she could tell he was getting closer. 

"I love feeling your big, thick cock throbbing and then filling me up with your cum." She whispered again between pants and Mitch straightened back up. He bit his lower lip as he thrust wildly and ruthlessly into her now raw and red pussy. "Ahh... ahh. oh god, you feel so good." She almost looked pained, like the feeling was too much. She pushed against him and heard his hips smacking against her ass as he pumped into her. He felt a knot untying in stomach and he pushed into her with all of his might. She yelped loudly and threw her head back against the cushions. Mitch moaned and thrust into her again, this time she felt her walls become coated as he shot his load inside of her. He collapsed to the side, propping himself up on the back of the couch and staring down at her, watching her chest moving up and down as she tried to steady her breathing. "I'm gonna die. That was so good. That was all I wanted. I jus... ugh.. thank you." She panted, and closed her eyes. Mitch smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the lips. 

"Shit, I'm going to pull out and you are going to drip all over my brother's couch and he's going to kill me." Mitch realized that real leather left decent stains when introduced to something wet and sticky.

"Tissues." Willa pointed to a box out of her reach on the coffee table. 

Mitch grabbed them and pulled a handful out, handing them to Willa and watching her press them against her raw cunt as he pulled out. He smiled when she asked for more. He cleaned himself off and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her to Steven's bathroom. "Do you want to get in the shower with me?" Mitch asked as he turned the faucet to 'H'.

Willa looked in the mirror and fussed with her hair. "Not if you're going to get my hair wet." 

"I can't promise I won't." Mitch said as he stepped under the warm spray, slicking his hair back with his hands.

"Then I'll wait for you to finish." She said with a grin. "Does he have another bathroom?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

"Cause I have to pee or I'm going to get a UTI." Willa sheepishly divulged. 

"So just pee. I don't care." Mitch said with a grin and a chuckle. 

Willa's eyes got wide.. "Will that be weird? Are we at that point yet?"

"I think so... right?" 

"Fine, but turn around." She yelled as she lifted the seat and sat. Mitch smirked but did as she said. "I don't get why we're showering now, we have two hours. That's like a solid whole other quickie, a shower, getting ready and getting down there by 5:45." Willa told Mitch as he lathered shampoo into his chocolate locks.

"Is this place far, like are we walking?" 

"Yea, we can walk. But... oh shit, babe. You didn't bring a suit did you?"

Mitch rinsed the conditioner out and turned to her. "No.. is this place fancy?" He asked as he stepped out of the shower, leaving the door open for her. He leaned up against the tile, dripping on the floor as he rubbed a clean towel through his hair. It was the only clean towel in the bathroom so he tried to keep it dry for Willa. 

"Yea, it's a total suit and tie kind of place. Would any of Steven's fit you?" She asked as she tied her hair neatly up into a high bun, and then let the water cascade onto her shoulders. 

"I haven't seen him in a while but unless he's gotten ripped in the last year, I don't think we're the same size anymore. Do you have something to wear for tonight?"

"Yea, but I'm going to need a steamer, can you check if he has one? I'm sure he does. He works on Wall Street, he probably wears suits every day." 

Mitch looked around the bathroom, then walked into Steven's bedroom. He saw a handheld steaming device on his dresser. He ran back into the bathroom to see Willa wrapping herself in the towel. "I found one. Can I help you get ready?" 

Willa smiled sweetly at the man in front of her. "It'll take me like ten minutes to do my makeup and hair. There is a short, silk, black dress in my bag, if you hang it up against his closet or something and just steam the wrinkles out, that'd be great." He nodded, walked over to kiss her and walked out of the room. She followed him, seeing him putting on a fresh pair of boxer briefs, and then digging through Willa's bag. He pulled out the dress and raised his eyebrows, walking into the bedroom with it. 

She walked in, about seven minutes later, a gray smoky eye, cat-eye gel liner on her top lids, a soft peachy-pink blush on her cheeks, and chapstick smeared across her lips. She was stunning. She saw him looking through Steven's closet and turned when he saw heard her feet against the hardwood flooring. "Wow. You look amazing." A smile breaking out across his face. "None of these are going to fit me though." 

Willa had her iPhone in her hand and was scrolling. "There's a Brooks Brother's a few blocks away, if I throw enough money at them, they should be able to put you in something good before dinner... stop staring at me and go put on some clothes." She grinned... "Wait, wait, no, come back. I can't reach the dress." She laughed and stood on her tip-toes, trying to grab the hangar from the top of the tall closet door. Mitch laughed and walked back, pulling the dress down, handing it to her, and pecking her on the lips. She came out of Steven's room in the black silk slip dress, her breasts peeked out the top and sides and it hugged her hipbones and ass perfectly. She reached down to grab her black stilettos and her black leather Everlane clutch and sat on the couch, buckling her strappy heels around her ankles.

"You seriously look so fucking good, Will." Mitch shook his head as he stared at the woman in front of him. He watched as she stood, the heels adding a hole other dimension to the outfit, and a few inches, and still had to reach up to kiss him. He helped her put her jacket on, and they walked out the door. 

Willa walked into Brooks Brother's and almost immediately, every salesman, young and old, was by the front door, eager to help her. Mitch grinned at the fuss his woman could make in a simple black dress. "I need to get him in a.. either slate gray or dark blue fitted suit, white shirt, skinny tie, and some black wingtips and socks... He needs a whole ensemble in an hour... and I do mean 'fitted'." She told the sales associates. 

"Oh Miss, I'm sorry, we don't usually do rush orders.."

"You're going to want to do this one, we'll be paying in cash." She lifted her clutch slightly and smiled her most charming smile. 

"The tailor is upstairs, if you'll follow me."

Willa flashed an accomplished smile at Mitch who smirked over how fancy she was being. Instead of making a whole new suit for Mitch, the tailor measured him, fit him in something close to his size and then took in what needed to be taken in and let out what needed to be let out. Willa looked for the perfect pair of black wingtips and a pair of blue and gray patterned socks. She found a tie that had the same color blue as the socks and she brought them all to the register to be rung up. She paid in cash and tipped the sales associate and tailor handsomely for their speedy efforts. She checked the time on her phone: 5:45PM. Their reservation was at 6:15 and Mitch wasn't done yet. She slumped in one of the arm chairs and waited, impatiently jiggling her foot. 

"Ma'am, I put his clothes in a bag for you." The sales associate came over to give Willa the clothes that Mitch had walked in with. 

"Can you do me one last favor, John, and just hold on to those overnight? We will pick them up in the morning if that's okay." 

"Absolutely, Mrs. Rapp. I'll leave them behind the register up here and we open at 8AM." The sales associate left her with a massive grin on her face. She didn't know why she had told him that her name was 'Wilhelmina Rapp' when he asked, but that was what she told him. She scratched her head, and shook her head. She wondered how Mitch would have reacted if he had heard it. She realized that her hair was still wrapped up in a bun, so she tugged at the hair tie, and watched in the mirror as it cascaded down on her shoulders in perfect, soft brown curls. She fixed her part and fluffed her eyelashes and hoped that Steven would be impressed with the girl that his brother was dating. 

"Will..." She heard his low, raspy voice and turned.

The breath hitched in her throat and she felt butterflies take over her stomach. "Oh my god.." She walked up to him and pulled at the lapel of his slate-gray suit jacket. "You look even better than I imagined." She leaned up to kiss him. He gently placed his lips against hers, feeling her kiss turn into a smile against his mouth. He laughed softly. 

"You are the one that looks even better than I remembered when I went in there." He ran his fingers through her curls, and she leaned her cheek into his touch. "The tailor said you paid for all of it already?" Mitch said with a frown. "You didn't have to do that. I could have paid for it too."

"You and Steven grew up in McLean, Virginia... I know you could've paid for it, but I wanted to treat you. Is that okay?" She asked, as she kept eyeing his suit, unable to stop staring at how good he looked. 

Mitch sighed softly and smiled. "Yea, that's fine. Thank you." He kissed her forehead. 

Willa smiled bashfully and looked up at the sales associate who was trying not to stare at the beautiful couple, and was fake rearranging ties at a table close by. "John, this is silly, but can you take a picture of us?" She handed him her iPhone. 

"Absolutely. One of the most stunning couples I have ever had walk into my store. Maybe a haircut for the mister but still, magnificent." The older man said. 

"No, he's perfect the way he is." Willa swiped his hair across his forehead, and smirked up at him. She heard the photo snap while they were looking at each other and not the lens.

"One more. At me this time." They looked forward, smiled, clutching onto each other's hips, and heard the camera app make a shutter clicking noise. "Beautiful!" He handed the phone back to Willa, who closed it before looking at the pictures because she saw the time on the clock above John's head.

"Thank you, John. We have to go." Mitch helped drape her coat over her shoulders, button the top button of his jacket, and intertwined his fingers with hers.

"We will see you tomorrow for your clothes. Have a wonderful evening, Mr. and Mrs. Rapp. Thank you for thinking of us here at Brooks Brother's."

Willa flashed him a smile and they headed out the door. Her face was flush red and she avoided looking up at Mitch. 

"Mr. and Mrs. Rapp?" Mitch asked with a smirk.

"He must've just assumed.." Willa mumbled.

"Mhmm." He clutched her hand tighter in his. He didn't hate the sound of it.


	15. Day 75, Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa meet up with Mitch's brother, Steven, and finish out their first day in Manhattan.

"Mitch?! Holy shit, is that you?" A handsome, light brown haired man approached the couple. He looked like Mitch, but with less moles and his hair gelled and parted to the side. He wore a well-fitting black suit and was about the same height as his brother. His smile lit up his entire face when he saw his long-lost brother.

"Steve." Mitch wrapped his brother up in a bear hug in the lobby of the lavishly decorated restaurant.

"I barely recognized you, brother. You're... you're fucking swoll." Steven looked stunned. "And that's a great fucking suit. Where'd you get it?"

"Willa literally had it made for me and they were finishing tailoring it less than fifteen minutes ago down at Brooks Brother's by your apartment. That's why we're a little late. I didn't have a suit." Mitch pulled Willa in front of him, in between him and his brother. 

"Willa.. holy sh-" Mitch gave Steven a look, and Steven grinned. "You are triple the amount of beauty that Mitch described you to be, and you whipped him up real nice too. It's really nice to meet you." Steven gave her a quick hug and a genuine smile. 

"It's nice to meet you. I almost feel like we've met before," Willa grinned up at Mitch, letting him recall the time that he stole his brother's identity to use as his own when the recruits infiltrated a college reunion. Mitch smirked and dug his hands into his pockets sheepishly. "Mitch has told me so much about you."

 _"Mr. Rapp, your table is ready. Follow me please."_ The hostess eyed Steven and Mitch. They were both ridiculously handsome and well put together. Steven gestured for Willa to go first, and Mitch rested his hand in the small of her back, letting her lead the way.

They sat down and placed their orders, making casual small talk until their drinks came. The table was small enough that they were all close enough together but instead of reaching over to hold Willa's hand under the table, he hooked his foot around her ankle, not playing footsie, just pressing his limbs against hers, wanting to always be touching her. She smiled at him and blushed as he kept his foot against hers. Their moment broken when Steven raised his glass for a toast.

"To my big brother, Mitch. I am so happy to see you and I am so happy that you have found someone with such obviously good taste in men and suits and who puts such an obviously huge smile on your face. To Mitch." 

Mitch smiled and shook his head. "To Mitch." Willa echoed his sentiments and the three of them clinked their glasses. Mitch leaning over to peck Willa on the cheek, as she raised her champagne flute to her lips.

"So Willa, is this your first time in New York?" Steven asked as he placed his whiskey neat back on the table. Willa smirked at the question and the fact that the brothers were drinking the same thing. "I was actually born and raised here, moved to Williamsburg when I was about nine, and came back here for college."

"Oh did you go to NYU or FIT or something?" Mitch snickered into his glass. 

"Columbia." 

"Holy shit, you're Ivy." He glanced at Mitch who raised his eyebrows and took another sip, trying to downplay his pride in his girlfriend.

"Steve went to 'Cuse like me and studied finance and business." Mitch interjected.

"What'd you study at Columbia?" Steven asked.

"Uh... I double majored in History and Middle Eastern Studies, and double minored in Political Science and Arabic."

"Holy shit, she's smarter than the two of us put together." Steven glanced at his brother, who had closed his eyes and was gently nodding, a permanent smirk resting on his face.

"Oh come on, maybe smarter than Mitch, but you're like some financial wunderkind from what I've heard." Willa ribbed on Mitch.

"Oh she's got jokes. I like her. So how did you two meet? I was kind of stunned when Mitch told me he was bringing someone with him this week. Did you meet while you were traveling?" He looked at his brother. 

"I actually, finally took that job at the State Department about three months ago, and I've been down in D.C. and Willa works in my department and we just hit it off."

"You've been back stateside for three months?" Steven's face lost its happy luster.

"Yea, but I was getting settled in and... I'm sorry man, you know where my head was at the last time you saw me." Mitch leaned forward, wresting his elbows on the crisp, clean white table cloth.

Steven didn't want to dwell on the subject at dinner. "Yea... well, so you met at the State Department. What are you both doing there?"

"The same as what my original position was, we're both Foreign Service Officers, this time for the Middle East." 

"That's a much more terrifying place than Europe, Mitch." Steven worried about his only surviving family member. 

"It's not bad, we're mostly just on diplomatic missions or back here advising." Willa tried to reassure the young man, even though he should be worried because their actual jobs were ten times more dangerous than those of a Foreign Service Officer.

"Well have you met any cool world leaders or been anywhere good yet?" Steven asked. 

"You know we can't tell you anything, Steve." Mitch leaned back as the servers reached in front of him and placed their dinners down on the table.

"It's so stupid, you have the coolest jobs in the world, you have definitely met like Obama or someone awesome, and you can't even talk about it if you did." Steven whined as he cut into his steak. Mitch shrugged. He just wanted to Steven to drop it. He was thrilled when he heard Willa changing the subject.

"So Steven, you really have a stunning apartment, what is it that you do exactly?" Willa asked as she cut her lamb chops apart. 

"Thank you. I love that place. And, uh, I started as a hedge fund manager at Morgan Stanley, but got kind of bored of it. It wasn't challenging enough, ya'know? And so opened a small capital investments firm with one of my buddies from undergrad, and we've actually done really well for ourselves so far."

"My parent's were in capital investments too actually." Willa commented.

"Crap, were? Did they get hit by the recession in '08?" Steven asked.

"Steven.." Mitch growled under his breath.

"No, it's okay." She reassured Mitch. "My parents were both VP's for Cantor Fitzgerald and I lost them on 9/11 in the Towers." Willa told him, a soft smile remaining on her face, not wanting to worry Steven.

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry. That's really.. that's just awful."

"Thank you. It's okay."

Mitch piped up. "Speaking of Willa's Dad.." 

"Oh right, uh, so my Dad was huge into vintage cars, and well I inherited all of them, and they just sort of sit in a hangar in Brooklyn, near JFK, and I wanted to know if you both wanted to come with me tomorrow and check them out. Maybe drive a few..."

Steven's eyes bugged out. "Like what?"

"Well, my favorite is the Aston Martin DB5 or the Rolls Royce VI. Probably the Aston Martin, but there are about 12 more cars in there for you two to play around with tomorrow, if you want."

"I don't care how long you've been dating, I'm going to marry her if you don't. You can watch from the Rolls-Royce VI that we'll give you as a consolation prize." Steven stared at Mitch, who just sat there shaking his head at his goofy little brother. He knew that that would seal the deal on whether or not Steven liked Willa. 

"Steve loved cars growing up, if you couldn't tell.." 

"Yea, if finance didn't work out, I probably would've become an engineer and built race car engines or something."

"Then I think you're going to enjoy yourself tomorrow."

The waiters brought over their third round of drinks and the dessert menus and the laughter from the table roared through the room. The alcohol had loosened all three of them up and they were swapping stories from their childhoods.

"I can't believe you're a Yankees fan! That's just disgraceful." Steven yelled and laughed, garnering glares from the patrons around them over how loud he was. 

"I am not apologizing for loving the greatest team in baseball. And shouldn't the both of you be Nationals fans anyway? I mean, you grew up near D.C."

"No, I mean, yes, we went to Nationals games as kids but didn't really care about baseball then. We really got into the Mets when we were both at Syracuse and one summer all of our friends were renting houses in the Hamptons because everyone had jobs or internships in Manhattan, and instead, Mitch and I rented a one bedroom apartment in Queens and literally worked at Citifield." 

"We saw so many games that year." Mitch said with an amused smirk. 

"The only other summer that beat that one was when we were kids and Mom and Dad got season passes to Hershey Park and we went like every fucking weekend." Steven recalled.

"They hated that place by the end of that summer." Mitch shook his head. 

"I don't think Mom ate chocolate for like a year after that." Mitch and Steven burst into a fit of laughter thinking back on their happy childhood. 

Willa grinned watching the two young men reconnecting. They wrapped up dinner and all drunkenly stumbled home.

* * *

 

Mitch leaned his back against the brick wall of the balcony connected to Steven's twelfth story apartment. He watched as Willa stood in the bathroom, with the door open, and scrubbed the makeup off of her face with a disposable towelette. He took a sip of his Jameson and smiled as he saw her pull her hair up into a top bun, and carefully hang his new suit jacket and tie up on a hook near the front door. She walked around the apartment, doing small nighttime tasks in a longsleeved white crew neck and a pair of purple cotton boxers. It was such a difference from her look earlier in that evening but he thought she looked beautiful and sexy all the same. He was watching her finally slip into the covers on the pull-out sofa in Steven's living room, sipping her glass of ice water and snuggling into the book she was reading, when he heard Steven's voice from next to him. 

He turned to see Steven, leaning against the balcony staring out at the Pearl Street Playground below his apartment and the South Street Seaport a few blocks away. He looked pensive. "You missed graduation." He glanced over at his big brother. 

Mitch grimaced. He had missed a lot of things. "I know. I'm sorry. Just everything that had happened.." Mitch turned around, rolling the sleeves up on his brand new white dress shirt, and pressing his elbows into the rough brick. He clutched his cold glass in both of his large, muscular hands and looked down at the large ice cube floating in the brown liquid. 

"I know... I know everything with Katrina was fucked up, but I really thought you'd make it back for graduation, Mitch." Steven couldn't hide the hurt in his voice. All he wanted was for his only living family member to be there to celebrate his big day. "You missed a lot. You missed Mike and I opening the company, me getting to buy this place, Stephanie and I breaking up..."

"You and Steph broke up?" Mitch was surprised, and watched his brother gently nod.

"Yea, apparently she had been cheating on me with Liam for like an entire year."

"Liam Connelly?" 

"Yea, apparently they moved in together and he knocked her up." Steven said, a slight grin spreading over her lips.

"Didn't you guys used to fight because you wanted kids and she basically wanted to get her tubes tied?" Mitch asked, watching his brother slowly nod and take a sip of his own Jameson on the rocks. Mitch laughed. "Good, fuck her. Serves her right for cheating on you."

Steven turned to Mitch, leaning on just one elbow and his side against the balcony, his long legs crossed over each other. "I can't tell you how surprised I was when you told me you were dating someone new. I literally never thought you were going to get over Katrina."

Mitch stayed looking ahead, and took a drink. He hadn't thought about her all day. He felt grateful because he didn't have much in the way of memories with his dead fiancee in New York City. They had only been there together once in college and they ended up getting into a huge argument on the street in the Meatpacking District after a night of drinking with friends. He was grateful because it meant that he could be present in the moment with Willa while in Manhattan and not be sucked back into his past by a familiar sight or memory. 

"I mean, I'm still not  _over_ Katrina. I'll always love her, and I'll always think about how good our lives could have been together, but I genuinely think Willa has saved me from a life of... just fucking misery, honestly." 

"I like Willa. She's cool, and I swear I almost wet myself over that story with her trying to climb out of the moving rollercoaster at Hershey because of the spider. She's really funny." Steven said and watched Mitch's face light up. 

"She's actually really funny. She cracks me up all the time... There was this one time.. actually, no."

"No what was it?"

"It's.... it's a sex story sort of." Mitch blushed, and tried to remember how many drinks he had had that night that got him so talkative. 

"Come on, bro, we're both adults now. I like a good funny sort of sex story." 

Mitch nodded and sipped his nightcap. "This morning, we were on the train and Willa had said a few things previously, never whispering, and she finally just got really whiney and was like 'Let me just give you a blowjob.' and the woman in front of us had just had enough and turned around and glared at Willa, and Willa, so straight faced and quick was like, 'Not now, obviously. God turn around. You're so dirty.' And the woman's mouth just gaped open like she couldn't believe that it had gotten turned around onto her. I laughed so fucking hard. It was hilarious. She's constantly doing shit like that. Just small comments or whatever here and there." Mitch had turned half way through the story and was watching Willa sleeping, the light above her still on and the book closed over her hand. He radiated when he watched her.

"Have you told her you love her yet?" Steven asked, watching his big brother.

Mitch contorted his mouth slightly and took another sip, feeling the slowly melting ice cube bump against his nose as he began to reach the last tastes of his whiskey. "Not yet. I mean it's barely been two months. I don't want to rush her. She's been through a lot lately."

Steven nodded and glanced at his watch. "Times a ticking, big brother. You should know that better than anyone..." He downed the rest of his drink, patted his brother on the shoulder and headed for the door. "I'm gonna go knock out. I'll see you guys in the morning."

"Night, Steve." Mitch watched as Willa stirred at the sound of the balcony door closing, and he finished his drink.

He placed his drink on the kitchen counter and filled up a clean glass full of cold water. He downed it and filled it up again. The last thing in the world that he wanted was a hangover the next morning. He sat in a black leather club chair pushed away from the foot of the bed and began untying his shoes. Steven had come out of the bathroom and closed the door to his room, and woke Willa. She sat up in bed, and got a bearing on her surroundings. She dogeared the corner of Bram Stoker's  _Dracula_ and placed it on the table next to the couch. She then laid back in her original position, head resting on her arm and the edge of the pillow, and watched him untying his other shoe. She knew that she loved him because watching him doing something as simple and mundane as leaning over to take off his shoes made her heart flutter. 

"Did Steven go to bed?" 

"Yea." Mitch stood to unbutton his shirt, and watched as she got up on her knees and crawled across the bed towards him. He smiled as her tiny, delicate fingers pushed his out of the way and unbuttoned his shirt for him. She carefully unrolled his cuffs and got off the bed, standing in front of him. He leaned down, cupping her cheek as she moved down to unbutton his pants, and kissed her softly. She smiled into his embrace and he felt butterflies fill his stomach. She walked away and grabbed the hangar that his suit jacket and tie were hanging on. 

"Pants." She gave him her best 'gimme' hands and waited with a smirk. 

Mitch chuckled and took off his pants, suddenly standing in front of her in nothing but his boxer briefs. Steven's apartment was cold. Mitch recalled how Steve would leave his window cracked open even in the chill of February, growing up. He walked over to his bag and grabbed a pair of dark blue plaid sweatpants and pulled them on. Willa had folded his pants in half and carefully hung them on the bottom of the metal hangar. She draped his shirt, then his jacket, then his tie over the top of the hangar and went to place it back on the hook by the door. She turned around to see his perfectly pink lips turned up. 

"What?" She whispered as she walked back over to the bed. 

Mitch scratched at the scruff on his jaw and shook his head. "I just like the way you take care of me." 

She smiled, and then looked at her feet.  _"Of course I'm going to take care of you. I love you."_ was what she wanted to say. "You deserve someone taking care of you." was what she said instead, as she headed back to the bed. 

Mitch followed her to the bed, and climbed on top of her. He nipped at her neck and jaw and ears as she pawed at his bare and muscular back. Mitch slid down and hovered over her stomach, pulling her shirt up so he could leave kisses on her torso. He watched as she grinned and panted over his touch. He pulled gently at her shorts and began leaving long, wet, sucking kisses on her hips and pelvis. She squirmed under him. 

"Okay, okay, no, stop." She said a little over a whisper.

Mitch felt her hands yank his head up by his hair. He winced and looked at her. "What'd I do?"

"I'm too drunk to be quiet if we do this. I think your brother likes me so far and I really don't want him to hate me because I kept him up with my moaning and bullshit." She shook her head as she spoke. 

Mitch collapsed on the bed next to her. All he wanted was to eat her out. He had been thinking about it all day and the desire was only intensified by the alcohol, but he knew she was right. He would have been enthusiastic and she would have been loud. "We need a god damn hotel room." He muttered, adjusting his semi-erect penis in his pants.


	16. Day 76

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willa takes Mitch and Steven to Brooklyn to spend the morning and afternoon driving around in her father's collection of classic cars. She bonds with Steven and brings the brother's to her family's apartment on the Lower East Side, where she decides to stay with Mitch for the rest of the their trip in New York.

"That was honestly one of the best mornings of my life, Willa. Thank you so much for letting me tag along and do that." Steven was sitting sort of sideways in the narrow backseat of Willa's 1963 Aston Martin DB5. They were crossing over the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn, where he, Mitch and Willa had just spent the morning checking out and driving around in all of Willa's father's vintage collector cars. 

"Absolutely, I'm so glad you two had fun." She glanced over at Mitch who was slightly grinning at her from the passenger seat. "Plus it's good for the cars to actually be driven considering I'm never up here to do it myself anymore.. actually, Steven, I was thinking, my Dad used to use the cars to take clients out in and he always said that it helped him close deals.. if you ever needed a little extra something to bag a new client for your company, I'll give you the number for the guy that takes care of the cars, and he'll hook you up." 

"Oh, wow.. you don't have to do that." Steven was flabbergasted.

"No, please. You clearly have a respect for the cars, and Mitch says you're the responsible one. If it helps your business grow, the least I can do is lend you a car for a night." Willa shrugged, glanced back behind her to smile at him and then looked back in front of her to continue driving. 

"Thanks, Willa. That's really fucking cool of you." Steven grinned and massaged his hand against the supple leather seat beneath him. He knew that her offer would in fact help him with the Wall Street big wigs that he was constantly trying to nail down contracts with. Steven was the exact opposite of Mitch in many ways, he was willing to talk about his feelings at the drop of a hat, he was talkative and fidgety and always grinning or laughing. He wasn't one for long silences. "So did you grow up in the City or like in the suburbs upstate or on Long Island or something?" Steve asked, breaking the long pause between conversations. 

"I grew up on the Lower East Side." Willa answered.

"Oh cool, where?" Steven asked.

"Do you know the Gould Apartments?"

"No. Fucking. Way." Steven overannunciated every word, shock filling his voice. "That building is incredible. One of my clients lives there. That must've been a real bummer to have to sell it when you moved to Virginia."

"Uh, well, actually, I still own it... We could go by if you wanted." Willa offered, noticing Mitch contorting his face, concerned that Willa was disregarding her own feelings in order to get his brother to like her. 

"Fuck yeah, I'd love to go by, if we have time before lunch with your cousin." Steven was easily excitable. 

Willa got into the right lane on the FDR Drive in order to get off at the next exit to get to the Lower East Side. Mitch slid his hand on top of hers, which was gripping the gear shift, and he whispered. "Will, we don't have to go."

Willa smiled at him, a small amount of anxiety hidden behind her eyes. "It's okay. I should really check on the place myself anyway."

"Did I step into something here?" Steven asked hesitantly, catching a bit of their conversation from the back seat. 

"No, it's fine, Mitch is worried because I haven't been back to the apartment in a while. But it's fine." She looked at Mitch and gave him her most convincing smile. "Babe, how about instead of going out for lunch, you call Beth and see if she can grab take-out from The Meatball Shop on Stanton?" 

Mitch pursed his lips, sighed, and picked up Willa's phone to call Beth. He explained what the new plan was and relayed what everyone wanted from the restaurant. He hung up the phone as Willa pulled up to a beautiful neo-Gothic, early 20th Century apartment building and began to pull into the underground garage. She was stopped by one of the garage attendants, who surveyed her expensive and rare car before tapping on the window, asking her to roll it down. Willa complied and smiled up at the middle aged man. 

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, this is for resident's and guests only." The man said with some disappointment that he wouldn't get to examine the car closer while parked. 

"I know." She softly laughed and pulled her wallet out of her small black Everlane clutch. She handed the man her driver's license and saw his face go white. 

He stuttered as he began speaking again, after handing Willa back her I.D. "M.. M.. Miss Hurley. Oh my, Miss Hurley. I didn't even recognize you, how are you, ma'am? It's so good to see you again."

Willa's face beamed up at a man that she had known since her childhood and used to give her lollipops when she'd come home from school. "It's been a while, Perry. How are you? How's Linda?" 

"She is wonderful, Miss Willa. She'll be tickled pink to know that I saw you and that you have grown up so much." Willa blushed, and smiled back at her old friend. "You know, I thought this was your Daddy's car, but I just wasn't sure.. We've got some real high rollers in the building nowadays with some pretty fancy cars." 

"I hope they're being good to you, Perry." Willa said as she put the car in park and stepped out. Mitch and Steven hopped out on the passenger side and watched the reunion taking place. 

"Oh you know how it goes, Miss Willa." Perry paused and then smiled as he looked into Willa's kind eyes. "You know where they are, and just give me a call when you are leaving." 

Willa grinned and dipped her head into his small security booth at the top of the driveway. She emerged with three lollipops and threw two red ones over to the Rapp boys. "Thanks, Perry." She patted him on the back and watched him carefully step into the car to take it downstairs to park. "Should we go up?" She glanced at the two men, as she unwrapped her sucker and stuck it in between her teeth. She fished around her purse for her keys and turned them into a lock, that then revealed an elevator. 

"Penthouse?" Steven said as he watched her turn her key in the lock on the elevator and hit the 'PH' button on the panel. Willa raised her eyebrows at him, and watched the numbers scroll as they rose twenty-four floors. She took a deep breath as the doors opened and revealed a short hallway leading to white double doors. She unlocked the doors and the hallway flooded with warm, natural light, that bounced off of the light hardwood floors and white walls of the living room. "Holy shit." Steven muttered as he walked in after Willa and Mitch. 

The apartment was stunning. The living room was spacious and led out to a large deck, filled with a grill and patio furniture and a fire pit. The kitchen was large, for a New York City apartment, and was connected to a full sized formal dining room. There were two bedrooms on each floor and one bathroom on the first floor for guests. Willa wondered into a room, and Mitch followed her, while Steven climbed up the spiral staircase to the second floor.

"You okay?" Mitch asked as Willa sat down in a white suede club chair. He crouched down in front of her, grabbing her thighs over her jeans, instead of sitting in the companion club chair next to her. 

"Yea, I'm glad Perry was the one working today. It put me more at ease." She shook her head with a smile. "Weird being back."

"Bad weird?" Mitch asked, staring up at her hazel-green eyes, and tucking a stray hair behind her ear. Willa shook her head again. 

"No, it's okay actually." She smiled down at him, so taken aback at how handsome he looked in the soft white lighting coming through the windows. She pressed her hands against his cheeks and leaned down to kiss him.  _"I love you. Thank you for being here with me right now."_ was what she wanted to say, as she felt the passion coursing between the two of them as their lips stayed connected in a prolonged embrace. She was going through so many things with Mitch and experiencing such strong emotions for him and she just wanted to share it, but she would not rush him, so she restrained herself. 

Mitch pulled back, got on his knees, and leaned over, leaving his head in Willa's lap, as he wrapped his arms around her waist. She felt her heart swell again, as she brushed her fingers through his hair and gently massaged his scalp. Their intimate moment was interrupted by the intercom buzzing at the front door. Willa got up to answer it. 

" _Miss Hurley, we have a Elisabeth Hurley down here saying she is a guest."_ The front desk attendant said.

"You can send her up. Thank you." Willa unlocked the front door and left it ajar. Mitch was in the kitchen looking for plates and silverware, when Willa walked up behind him to grab napkins. She watched as he left four dinner plates on the counter, and then leaned up against her. He pressed his body and his lips against hers again and she felt lightheaded. She sighed as he leaned away, hearing Steven come down the spiral staircase. She looked up in his eyes and whispered. "You know... I don't know if you want to, but we could stay here the rest of the trip..."

Mitch grinned and licked his lips. He knew what was going through Willa's head. "Are you going to be okay doing that?" She nodded. "Are you going to be weirded out having sex in your parent's house?" Willa grinned and shook her head. "Can we kick Steven out right now?" Willa laughed and shoved Mitch off of her as she heard Beth's footsteps outside in the hall. 

"I brought drinks too cause I figured there would be nothing in this place." Beth said as she handed Willa a plastic bag and closed the front door behind her. 

"I was hoping." Willa said, as she placed it on the counter next to Mitch and Steven. "Beth, this is Mitch.." Mitch got up and shook Beth's hand; she smirked at Willa who grinned back at her. "And this is Mitch's brother, Steven." Steven leaned in to shake her hand as well. "Guys, this is Beth."

They took the food into the dining room and spent most of the rest of the afternoon eating, lounging, and getting to know each other. Beth left because she had a date that evening and Willa, Mitch and Steven decided to head back up to Steven's to get their bags. Mitch made sure that his little brother was okay with them not staying with him the rest of the week, and Steven said that as long as they kept all of their dinner plans with him, that he was fine with it. He just wanted to keep hanging out with his brother. Mitch and Willa hopped on the subway and headed back up to her apartment. 

In the loud commotion on the local downtown, Mitch remembered something that he had wanted to say to Willa all day. He rubbed his hand against her knee, getting her attention and he placed his face close to hers. "Hey babe..." Mitch said in a hushed tone. "Did you know that there are cameras in your apartment?" 

Willa smiled. "I know. I put them in."

"Okay, I just... paranoid spy." Mitch whispered, as he watched her slip her hand into his. 

She laughed. "I know."

"I thought Stan might have and he would know about us.."

Willa shook her head, as they stood and exited the train at their stop. Willa walked ahead of Mitch and passed through the turnstile, then waited for him, her hand outreached, ready to rest against his once more. They got to the street level and began walking back to Willa's apartment. "First of all, I am really impressed that you even saw them."

"It took me a little because they are so small and well placed into the apartment, but I saw the one by the patio door and then I kept finding them." Mitch explained.

"Clearly I could've done a better job of installing them." She smirked and shook her head. "But no, Stan doesn't know about them. I installed them when some stuff went missing."

"You got robbed?" Mitch was surprised because the security in Willa's building and the efforts that it takes to get to the penthouse floors were actually quite good.

"I don't know. Maybe or it was the cleaning crew I had. I have no idea. I mean, I fired them and brought in a whole different cleaning company but it was weird. Whoever took stuff, took an old, 1958 OMEGA rose gold wrist watch that was my gradfather's and my dad wore pretty much every day. I mean, it was valuable but they left Rolex's next to it and they took a pretty expensive black pearl necklace of my moms, and a few other things, but they skipped over a lot of valuable stuff in that apartment... I don't know." Willa shook her head as Mitch opened the lobby door for her. She smiled at her doorman and they headed for the elevators. 

"Did you call the cops or find fingerprints?" 

"Yea, and they found nothing, so I had to assume it was the cleaning crew but the cops never found anything from them either so I don't think I'll ever know, but you bet your ass I installed cameras all over that fucking apartment after that." Willa had pressed the button for 'PH2', and her and Mitch went straight to the second floor of her apartment. 

"So where are we sleeping?" Mitch asked as they stood in the hall and Willa locked all of the locks on the door behind them.

"The master, I guess... right? It's not like any of the furniture that I grew up with is still in the apartment, so that's not weird, right?"

"It's your apartment, babe, so the master is rightfully yours." Mitch reassured her. 

"The master it is." She smiled. 

They walked down the hall and closed the door behind them. They made love and fell asleep naked in each other's arms, exactly what Mitch and Willa wanted from this trip.

 


	17. Day 78 (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch gets a smut filled morning with Willa.

Willa woke wrapped in nothing but his limbs and the bedsheets. She closed her eyes, tilted her head up towards the sun coming through the curtains, softly bit her bottom lip and sighed. She was so happy. She turned slowly and quietly, and looked at Mitch sleeping, gently pushing some of the hair from his eyes. He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful man she had seen in person, and his peaceful resting face made her heart skip beats. Mitch's legs moved under the sheets and he rolled onto his back, turning his head away from her. She smirked. He wasn't hard, but there was a small bulge that perked up under the thin white sheets on the bed. She rubbed her tongue along the bottom of her left canine and cracked a simple plot: she knew how she wanted to wake him up that morning.

Willa carefully climbed under the thin white sheet covering Mitch. He almost never slept with more than just the sheet when he slept with Willa because her body ran so hot at night, that if he slept with blankets, the two of them would wake up in a pool of sweat. She positioned herself on her stomach, her feet hanging out from under the sheet on the side of the bed. She leaned against her left forearm as she licked her lips and picked up his penis with her right hand. It was big even when it was flaccid. She popped the head into her mouth and lightly sucked. Mitch stirred gently and she grinned. She lifted his member and dragged her tongue on the underside, from the very base back up to the head, popping the tip back into her mouth for a quick suck. Mitch stirred more definitively, and he began to slowly grow in her hand. 

She licked back up the side closest to her, base to tip, pushing her tongue a little bit firmer against him this time, and she heard him moan; a sound that he made when he woke up but a bit more breathy than usual. She wrapped her lips around his head and managed to get all of his semi-erect cock in her mouth. She moaned and the vibrations in her throat and mouth caused Mitch to rip the sheet off of him, revealing a sight that he wasn't sure until then was a dream or real. 

"Holy shit." He mumbled as she bobbed up and down on him, her lips suctioned tight around his shaft. She let go with a popping noise. She maintained an intense and arrogant eye contact with him, as she moved in between his legs and rested on her knees in front of him. She looked like she was worshipping his cock, and she basically was. 

He watched as she licked her lips and leaned her head down, still staring teasingly up at him. He bit his lip as she placed her delicate fingers under his balls, holding them up to her mouth like a snack that she had to have. She wet her lips and sucked his balls into her mouth, gently massaging them as they rotated over her tongue. 

"Oh fuck." Mitch broke their eye contact and threw his head back, his fingers both digging into the sheets around him and pushing the hair away from his face. Willa was pleased with all the fuss he was making. She let his balls drop, lightly sucking on one side, then moving over to the other. She caught his attention again when she dragged the tip of her tongue from above his balls, across the underside of his base, up the shaft and then took him into her mouth again. He had grown substantially since she last had his long and thick length against her lips. She worked the shaft in tandem with her mouth, picking up her pace and barely blinking. Mitch's breathing became heavy as she went and he tucked hairs that were falling in her face, behind her ear. 

"Please keep doing that." He begged, but she had other thoughts. She removed her hand from his shaft, pulling all of her hair to one side to drape over her shoulder, and began playing with his balls in her hand, as she then took as much of him as she could down her throat. Mitch jolted forward over the duel sensations. "Fuck... That works too." He huffed in between pants. 

He gathered her long brown locks in his fist, close to her head and began creating the rhythm and timing that he wanted as he forced her head up and down on him. She gagged as Mitch pushed her farther than she had been going and his tip hit the back of her throat. She didn't stop him though. The sound of him moaning as she choked turned her on. She moaned and the vibrations in her throat set him loose. 

"Oh fuck, Willa. God damnit. Do you want me to cum in your mouth?" It was a cross between a threat and a question, and Willa just kept sucking and gagging, her hand no longer playing with his balls, but instead jerking off the little bit of shaft that he couldn't fit in her mouth. She smiled with her eyes as he looked down at her. It made him crazy with lust whenever she did that... It made him aggressive. He pushed her head down and she choked harder than she had before. Mitch backed off a little, but she pushed herself back down as hard as he had pushed her before, choking again on his big thick cock. 

Mitch pulled her head up slightly and began thrusting himself up into her mouth with some speed. He was close and he just wanted to see her tongue painted white. She took every forceful thrust in stride and enjoyed herself, bracing herself against the bed, both arms on either side of his hips. Mitch pulled her head up all together and pushed Willa back onto her knees in an upright position. He got on his knees and began stroking himself in front of her face. She opened her mouth, her cheekbones turned up in a grin, and playfully left her tongue flat in front of him. She glanced between his dark, lustful eyes and his red and wet tip. He gripped the back of her neck and pressed his cock against her tongue. She felt his load shoot into her mouth. He kept stroking and it shot out in strings against her tongue, cheeks, lips. She let him fill her up and she waited, mouth open until he was done. 

He kept his left hand on the back of her neck and watched as she swallowed and then ran her tongue against her lips. He reached his thumb on his right hand against the corner of her mouth and wiped cum off of her face. She reached up for his hand and popped his thumb into her mouth, sucking against it until she had every last drop of him. The breath hitched in the back of his throat as he watched her swallow the last bits of his seed. He dropped to the mattress and watched as she climbed off of the bed. 

He held his tender cock in his hand, and closed his eyes, a happy smirk resting on his lips. She grabbed her underwear from the night before off the floor and his black, long-sleeved crew neck shirt and got dressed. She tip-toed over to him and smiled. He looked peaceful and pleased. She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips. "I'm going to make breakfast. Sleep a little longer." He nodded slightly and sighed, drifting back to sleep. 

* * *

 

Mitch woke up, swung his muscular legs over the side of the bed and stretched. He felt great. He grabbed his blue plaid pajama pants off the floor and secured them around his hips. He didn't want to bother with the rest of his clothes if he was just going to shower after breakfast. He heard Willa moving around in the kitchen downstairs, and he inhaled the aroma of Belgian waffles being baked. He walked down the spiral staircase and saw her back turned, paying attention to whatever it was that she was making on the stove. They had stopped by the grocery store on the way back from Steven's the night before to pick up some essentials to stock the kitchen with for the rest of their time there. 

Mitch hadn't really looked around the house the day before. He slipped into the room that he had found Willa in the day before on the first floor and quickly realized that it was probably her father's old office and library. It was the only room in the house that still had pictures of the Hurley's. She had purged every other room of those personal mementos. Mitch wasn't sure if that was because the memories were too painful or if it was the spy in her that wanted to be able to make a clean get away if she ever needed to. He saw a duplicate of the picture that Willa had in her bedroom back at The Barn, and he traced his fingers along the top of the frame. Not a speck of dust came off and Mitch realized that Willa definitely had her cleaning crew take extra special care of this room.

He walked over to the bookshelf that took up an entire wall and saw a row of hardcover books with the same author's name. He pulled one out that made him smile, and carefully flipped through the pages, before putting it back on the shelf. A picture of Willa on a swing set with another little girl that looked a lot like Beth sat on the shelf above the old books and Mitch found himself thinking how he hoped his children had Willa's eyes. He caught himself in his daydream, contorted his face with shock, and then felt the corner of his mouth turn up. It was not the most absurd thing he had ever thought about. He grinned, looking down at the floor and shook his head.

"What are you grinning about?" Mitch heard Willa whisper, as she leaned half her body against the other side of the door frame, holding onto the wood around her face. 

Mitch walked up to her and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Just looking at how cute you were as a kid... breakfast ready?" Willa nodded, and turned. She laughed out loud when Mitch came up behind her and gripped his hands against her hips, walking in step with her stride towards the kitchen. 

They sat down at the counter together and began eating their waffles and bacon and sausage and hash browns. Mitch swallowed some orange juice and watched as Willa poured more maple syrup on her plate. He laughed to himself and leaned back in the stool. "Do you want some waffles with your maple syrup, Will?" 

Willa took the strawberry off of her plate and placed it in between her lips, then looked up at Mitch with the strangest look on her face. "........I hate waffles." She tried to stifle a grin. 

Mitch burst out laughing. "So why the hell did you make them?" 

"YOU LOVE WAFFLES!" She yelled back, laughing into her arms on the counter. 

Mitch settled down, his cheeks hurt from smiling. "Oh god, I love..... that you are willing to eat something you hate just because you know I love it." He recovered quickly but he realized that he almost said what had been on the tip of his tongue for days. Willa heard it too but she didn't react and she didn't want to presume. Mitch changed the subject. "So was that a first edition copy of _The Great Gatsby?"_ He asked, referencing the books that put a smile on his face in her Dad's library earlier. 

Willa nodded as she ate everything on the plate that wasn't a waffle. "Those are all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels in their first edition. My dad was definitely a collector."

"Is that why that book is your favorite?" Mitch asked her, a smile not having left his face since he got out of bed that morning. 

"Yea, he used to read it to me when I was growing up, like twice a year at least. He loved that book because he grew up in a town called Sands Point, which is at the very tip of East Egg in the book... that collection of books are probably my most prized possessions."

"So there is a fire and you save me or the books?" Mitch proposed the absurd hypothetical. 

"Oh, you're toast." She said with a grin, getting up from the stool to clear their plates. 

He got up to clear his own and help her with the dishes when he saw her reach up on her tip-toes to put the waffle mix back in the cabinet above the fridge. Her taut but plump ass peeking out from under the hem of his favorite black shirt, and he stepped up behind her, pressing his body against hers as he easily placed the box away. He snaked his hands around her front, pulling the shirt up from the bottom until his hands rested on her hips. She exhaled heavily and leaned against him. Mitch slid one of his big, veiny hands down the front of her white cotton underwear and felt how wet she was. He began gently rubbing her clit, pulling her against him with his other hand, as she reached up behind her and grabbed a fistful of his hair. He breathed in her sweet scent and closed his eyes as she moved her arm around his, and began rubbing her palm against his cock, growing quickly inside of his pants. 

Willa had cupped her hand around his shaft and was rubbing it through his soft cotton pants, leaving him so turned on that he literally stopped rubbing Willa's clit and leaned into her touch. Mitch took a deep breath and came to. She had taken care of him, it was time to take care of her. He grabbed her hand from his cock and used his body to push her up against the marble countertop, pushing the dishes and bowls to the side, and bending her over against the cool surface. Mitch pulled his shirt off of Willa, pulling her up against him, and dragging his hand down her chest. She moaned at his roaming touch.

Mitch bent her back against the countertop again, her cheek pressed against the cool surface, as he gently pulled all of her hair to one side. He pressed his bare chest against her back, running his hands from her shoulders down her arms to intertwine his fingers with hers, spreading her arms out next to her. He had her completely pinned down as he nibbled on her earlobe and heard her moan softly. He released her hands and moved his lips towards the back of her neck. He swept the hair out of the way again and left long, wet and warm kisses on the back of her neck. She moaned a little louder. He pulled back slightly and softly blew cool air against the wet kisses he had left on her and she shivered. All of her nerves were standing on edge waiting to see what he would do next. 

Mitch leaned back over, his hot skin pressed against her hot skin, and he began to leave long, wet, warm kisses on her shoulder blades, leaving equal amounts on both sides and then meeting back at her spine. She was breathing heavily underneath him. Mitch took the tip of his tongue and dragged it down the length of Willa's spine, his hands running down her sides as he went. Willa let out her loudest moan yet and arched her back away from him, pressing her body against the counter harder. It was a part of her body that was woefully neglected by Mitch's mouth and she went wild over the rare sensations. Mitch stayed focused on her reaction and blew cool air back over the wet trail on her back. He then left long, sucking kisses back down her spine, taking care to go slowly. 

"Oh god, Mitch. That feels so good." She whined, not wanting him to stop. 

Mitch dropped to his knees behind her, slowly pulling her white cotton panties, with a growing wet spot by her pussy, down her legs. He grabbed fistfuls of her ass, pushing her up on the counter further. He kissed the backs of her thighs, leaving long, warm kisses down to the backs of her knees. She squirmed with each new touch as he kissed all the way down to her ankles. He worshipped every inch of her body and he wanted to make sure she knew that. 

Mitch glanced up at her swollen pink lips, barely sticking out between her thighs, and he recalled the sweet taste in his mouth. He got on his knees and spread her ass cheeks apart; she wiggled her body slightly as he ran his thumbs just barely over her inner lips; just grazing the surface. He felt the warmth radiating off of her. He leaned up and dragged his mouth over her opening, down to her clit; a messy and somewhat toothy interaction that left her screaming. 

"Aghhh.. FUCK, MITCH. oh my god." She had been aching for him to touch her there. 

He nibbled more softly against her clit and sucked at it, pulling it away from her with the very tips of his teeth. She writhed on the counter with each new thing he did. Mitch sucked and sucked for a few more moments, flicking her nub with the tip of his tongue, driving her wild. Finally he rose from his knees, pulling his pants down to his ankles, and he pulled Willa back towards the edge of the counter. She was panting against the white marble as she felt him press his hard cock up against her. He had grown to prefer not just shoving it in, but inching his length in slowly; getting to feel every bump and curve of her walls, but that was not going to work for him today. He was entirely too riled up.

"Please." She whispered right before he pushed himself inside of her in one swift motion. He moaned over how tight she was in that position and how deep he immediately went inside of her. She yelped out the moment he entered her. He began thrusting hard against her, pulling her hair back so he could see her face. He picked her up by the throat and then let go, slowing down and remembering how he found Willa and Dan the night she was assaulted. Willa looked behind her, reached for his hand, and wrapped it back around her throat. Mitch was not Dan. 

Mitch inhaled deeply through his nose as he felt her heart beat against the veins in her soft and slender neck. He pulled her close to him, picking up his pace, his hand still around her neck, his other hand fastened around her hip, and he messily pressed his lips against hers. She dug her nails into his forearm as she hungrily bit at his lower lip. He continued his deep thrusts into her pussy and pushed her back against the cold countertop. He reached his arm around her front, pulling her slightly away from the marble, and began rubbing Willa's clit vigorously. The muscles in his forearm strained as he picked up speed and pressure on her swollen nub, as she told him she was close and begged him for release. 

"Oh... ohh...." She moaned loudly as she came undone, and Mitch felt her walls collapse around him. This was the tightest her sweet little cunt had ever been and he came undone as well. One more rough thrust deep into her was all he needed. She screamed at the intense pressure that his depth caused her to feel, and then she cooed as she felt his chest press up against her back, his fingers intertwine with hers, and warm cum begin to fill her insides. She would kill for the feeling, both emotional and physical, that she got when he came inside of her. She knew that there was nothing better. 

They're breathing synced up as they both came down from their climaxes. Mitch rubbed his cheek against the back of Willa's neck and closed his eyes. "That was the best sex I've ever had." He whispered into her skin. 

"I'm going to have to agree with you." She echoed his sentiments, enjoying the feeling of his fat, softening cock still lightly throbbing inside of her. Willa sighed. "What time is it?" 

Mitch glanced behind him and saw that the clock on the stove said 10:45AM. "It's almost 11." He said as he reluctantly pulled out of her, watching his seed drip down her thigh. 

Willa turned around to face Mitch, standing for the first time in at least forty minutes. She held herself up with the edge of the counter. "We need to go, my love. You have lunch with Steven and I have lunch with Katie and Jeannette." 

"I know." He leaned down and kissed her. A smile coming across his face at her new pet name for him. 'My love'. It made his heart skip a beat because of how organically it came off her lips. He watched as she began walking for the staircase, and he smirked. "You know, if we ever lived here, the first thing I would do is install a shower down here, because I cannot have you constantly dripping my cum all over these hardwood floors." Mitch teased Willa, who had grabbed a paper towel before she left the kitchen and was reaching down every few steps to wipe up her thighs. 

"Shut the fuck up. How about that?" Willa said with a grin that made her cheeks hurt, as she made her way up the stairs.

 


	18. Day 78 (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch spends the afternoon with Steven, then joins Steven and Willa at a nightclub downtown where things get a little handsy.

"Bro.. do you know who that is over there?"

"Hmm?" Mitch glanced over to where Steven was looking. He didn't recognize the man that was being seated at the table nearby. He shook his head and looked back at his food.

"Dude, you know who Jake Gyllenhaal is.." 

Mitch shrugged. "Name sounds familiar."

Steven shook his head and looked back at the table full of food in front of him. "You are so nonchalant about everything." Mitch laughed and shrugged again, his mouth full of cornbread. "So do you have any pictures from your trip?" 

"What trip?" Mitch asked, his mouth full after putting a forkful of mac-n-cheese in his mouth. 

Steven lowered the barbecue rib from his mouth and put it back on his plate, confused as to how Mitch didn't know what trip he was referring to. "....... the trip you took after Katrina... the one you were on for more than a year...?" Steven stared at his brother, with his brow furrowed. 

"Oh.." Mitch chuckled and glanced down at his plate. "Um, not really." 

"No pictures? At all?" Steven seemed bamboozled by that concept, as he was absolutely attached at the hip to his iPhone and was garnering quite a following on Instagram. Steven was definitely more a child of his generation than his brother. 

Mitch nodded and stuffed cornbread in his mouth, chewing the dry carb in an effort to stall. "It just wasn't that kind of trip, you know? I was trying to..." 

"Get over Katrina, I know. I just figured.. I don't know, a landscape or something. Where'd you even go?" 

This Mitch felt the need to lie about. He didn't think that his brother would understand why, after seeing his fianceé be killed, Mitch would return to the Middle East for leisure. "Spent some time in Asia. Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia.. I really liked Cambodia." Mitch had never been. "I wish I had taken some pictures now. The thought just never crossed my mind at the time." Mitch shrugged. 

Steven went back to eating; his suspicions having been quelled. "I'm guessing you're not really allowed to take pictures on your trips for work either."

Mitch chuckled and shook his head. "No, not really."

"Well, listen..." Steven sighed, and wiped his hands on the napkin tucked into his shirt collar, protecting his suit from their messy lunch choice. "I don't need pictures of your trips, and I don't really even need the stories either... I just need my big brother back. I can take trips down to D.C. when you're in the States, and I'm assuming like every one else you get holidays off. You and Willa can always come back up here for the Fourth of July." 

Mitch understood how much he had abandoned his younger brother and he felt guilty for it, but he could not give Steven anything definitive for fear of letting him down again. "We get some holidays off, and if we have that off, then yea, we'll definitely come up here for it."

"Or I could come down to D.C. I bet Independence Day in the Capital is probably sick." 

"Yea, maybe.."

Mitch and Steven finished their lunch and began walking back to Steven's office building, when Mitch spotted a used bookstore.

"Uh, do you mind if I pop inside for a minute? I want to see if they have something.. if you have to go back to work, I'll just see you later at dinner?" Mitch asked, as they stepped out of the way of the other pedestrians. Steven shrugged and followed his brother. 

"What are you looking for?" Steven said as Mitch looked for someone who worked there. 

"Excuse me, where are your classics?" 

The skinny young man behind the check out desk took his time raising his gaze from his magazine up to Mitch, but when he did so the brothers, a smile spread across his face and he leaned over the counter. "Over there, honey." He pointed of to the right. "Let me know if I can help you with _anything_."

Steven snickered and Mitch walked off, not noticing that he was being flirted with. "What are you looking for?" Steven asked again, Mitch's eyes scanned the shelf full of old secondhand books. 

"I just want to see if they have something..." Mitch poked his head around, moving the stacked books around on the shelves. 

"I can help, you know?" Steven complained, tiring of his brother's silence. 

"Don't need it." Mitch brought the hardcover book up to the register. "How old would you say this is?"

The employee gave his best pout as he examined the book. "Maybe a third or fourth edition?" He rung up the book and handed it to Mitch, watching as the two brothers walked out of the store. 

"Alright well that was fun. I'll see you guys at like 8?" Steven said smirking and shaking his head, holding the door to his building open, half standing in the lobby.

Mitch nodded and walked back towards the subway.

* * *

 

 Willa sat on a cozy love seat, under a heat lamp, at the rooftop bar of The Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. Her, Mitch and Steven decided to get drinks after dinner and enjoy a Tuesday night on the town. Mitch was standing at the bar, trying to get their order in, and Willa seized the moment. She leaned forward towards Steven and asked a question that had been in the back of her mind since she found out about Katrina. 

"What was he like growing up?"

Steven put down his phone when he heard her question. He glanced behind Willa to see Mitch still waiting to be served at the bar. "Funny. He was always smart and driven and all of that, but he was lighter then, you know? When our parents died, Mitch really took it hard."

"The boarding schools..." Willa interjected.

Steven nodded. "We got shipped off to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to live with our aunt, step-uncle, and three cousins, and Mitch just didn't handle it well. I was young enough, that I was just sad, but Mitch was angry. He got in fights and he didn't go to class.. He stole my uncle's gun and car and just drove out to the woods and shot targets until it got dark. The police finally found him and.." Steven shrugged. "It was boarding school, after boarding school, after boarding school.. The last one made the difference. He found a coach that saw the potential in him and he became Varsity captain of the lacrosse team by Sophomore year. He did winter track and swim team in the fall."

"He went to 'Cuse on a lacrosse scholarship, right?" Mitch had never told her that, he didn't like talking about college very much, but she had done some snooping in the files in Stan's office when they were both gone.

Steven smiled and nodded. "Yea, he was a beast... an actual All-American athlete, you know?" Steven shook his head. "I love my brother a lot, and I don't mean to sound cocky, but when I got to Syracuse a year after him, it was like the Mitch I grew up with. He was good again, light, effervescent, funny, talkative. I think being around a sport he loved, and good friends, and his brother-"

"And Katrina.." Willa didn't like beating around the bush. 

Steven nodded. "I think it all did good for him. 

"So the Mitch that we have today is because of Katrina then?"

Steven paused. "It was not at all fair that that happened to him twice.." Steven came around and sat next to Willa on the seat, trying to not shout over the music. "...that he lost people so suddenly and tragically, twice? It was just fucked up. He left about two weeks after her funeral and he stayed in touch and kept his apartment for about four months, and then he just disappeared, sold the place, and I didn't hear from him again until like two weeks ago when he told me he was coming up here with you."

Willa fidgeted with her hands in her lap. "I don't know what to to say.. that's... just.." She trailed off and shook her head, looking around to see Mitch finally speaking to the bartender.

"I've never seen him like he is now though. I can tell that anger is somewhere under the surface, like it was when we were kids, but at the same time he's...." Stephen paused looking for the right words. "You clearly make him really happy, Willa. He's different than he was with Katrina. Maybe he just grew up more or something. I mean, they were only twenty-three when they got engaged."

"What are you two talking about?" Mitch came over, balancing three drinks among his long fingers, and sitting where Steven had been sitting, across from Willa. 

Steven hooked his arm around Willa's shoulders, hugging her close to his side, and smiled. "Talking shit about you, big bro." 

Willa grinned and patted Steven's arm, appreciating that Steven didn't divulge the true nature of their conversation. Mitch smirked and rolled his eyes. "Then you get no drink,  _little bro._ " 

* * *

 

Mitch leaned against the wall, sipping his whiskey and watching as Willa chatted up a girl with Steven. He thought back on the last time he saw her act like a wingman at a party. He remembered the electricity that surged through his body when, in her tight, short, cream colored dress and thigh-high black suede boots, she leaned over his lap, her hand resting on his thigh for stability, and ordered his favorite drink without him ever having told her what it was. He remembered watching her gyrate on the dance floor, and the way her body moved in her dress. He took a deep breath and took a sip of his drink, suddenly feeling overheated. He scanned the dark room, full of sweaty, grinding bodies, swaying to the overly loud music, and saw Willa, grin and nudge Steven as he got dragged out onto the dance floor with the girl he was trying to snag. 

Willa turned around, a mischevious and drunken smile plastered on her face. She spotted Mitch and began strutting off the dance floor towards him, purposefully swaying her hips in an exaggerated fashion as she approached him. She paused to down the rest of her champagne and leave it on the bar, turning back to Mitch, and dancing her way over to him. He stared at her legs, barely covered by a high waisted and short red leather skirt. His eyes made their way up her body passed the tight, long sleeved, but low cut black shirt, and choker necklace, and up to her red-stained lips, moving as she sang the words to the song playing over the speakers. He grinned, and rubbed at the stubble on his chin, chuckling and shaking his head at her tipsy behavior. 

"Come on..." She pulled at his hand, trying to get him to follow her onto the dance floor. 

Mitch didn't budge from the wall, instead pulling her back against him. "I haven't seen you like this before." He said, his lips curling up at the corners, as he snaked his arm around the small of her back. 

"I have fun sometimes." She whispered up to him, tonguing her top left canine as she smirked. She swayed her body against his, her hands pressed against Mitch's chest, and her face inches away from his. "Come dance with me."

"I haven't danced in a long time..."

"But you've danced.." Willa ground her body against his a little harder, and smugly licked her lips.

"I don't think so, Will.." Mitch was trying to suppress a grin. He didn't want her to know how much she was turning him on. He wanted to remain stubborn and win, so that maybe she would want to leave and go home instead. 

Willa was definitely the more stubborn of the two of them. She looked up at the speaker above them in the ceiling as she heard the song change. She grinned and then pouted. "I love this song. Please?" Mitch shook his head. 

_"Your man on the road, he doin' promo... You said, 'keep our business on the low-low'.."_

Willa connected her eyes with his and began silently singing the words to him. "I'm just tryna get you out the friend zone, cause you look even better than the photos..." She smirked and wiggled her fingers at him in a come hither fashion. 

Mitch laughed, dropping his head down, and pushing the back of his hand to cover his smile. "Nope." He killed his whiskey neat and placed it on the tall table next to him, finally wrapping his hands around Willa's waist. 

The bass on the lightly remixed version of The Weeknd's,  _"The Hills"_ dropped and Willa turned around, her hands pulling Mitch's arms tighter around her, and she began to grind her body against his. Mitch pressed his lips together and tried to remain resolved in his stubbornness. He rolled his head back and quickly gave up. He'd pretty much do anything she wanted. Mitch grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the dense crowd of people. 

" _I only love it when you touch me, not feel me. When I'm fucked up, that's the real me. When I'm fucked up, that's the real me, yeah.."_

Willa grinned from ear to ear and wrapped her arms around Mitch's neck. He tried to suppress his smirk and pulled her body close against him. She swayed back and forth against him, smirking as she remained inches away from his face. She pressed her hand against the nape of his neck, leaning him closer and she connected her lips to his. His hand made it down to squeeze her ass as they continued kissing and grinding on each other. 

The deejay seamlessly flowed The Weeknd into a remixed version of  _"Drunk in Love"_ by Beyonce and Willa smiled into their prolonged, sloppy kisses. She broke away and turned around, keeping her arms hooked around his neck. She felt Mitch begin to sway his hips against her in a way that kept good time with the hypnotic rhythm. She felt her desire for the way his body moved against hers begin to pool against her black panties. She was entranced at the natural way his body moved to the music.

Willa's left hand broke free from its sweaty grip around his neck and ruffled her hair in a way that wafted the familiar vanilla scent into his nostrils. He was more intoxicated by her than the alcohol. Mitch snaked his hand up her arm and placed her hand back around his neck. He then reached around, cupping his hand under her chin and pulling up. He felt her twitch against his grip, a quick flashback beginning to form in her memories. 

"It's just me. It's just us." Mitch whispered into her ear, his lips grazing her cheek. 

Willa breathed deeply and surrendered to Mitch's pull. He locked his lips against hers, his hand holding tightly against her jaw, as he bit and pulled at her bottom lip. He heard the faintest moan come from Willa's mouth, as her fingers curled into his hair and she pushed against his cock. His free hand worked its way up from her hip bone, lightly pulling at her leather skirt as his sticky skin moved, to her sternum, and Willa whimpered. She could barely hear the music over the sound of her heart thumping in her ear drums. Mitch tugged at her bottom lip again and she could no longer fight the urge. 

She grabbed at his hand, pulling it off of her throat, and led him out of the crowd. Her skirt was slightly off kilter from their dancing, and Mitch reached down with his free hand to pull it back in place. She was no one's to look at but his. 

She led him down a long and dark hallway and towards a stairwell. Mitch stopped Willa and pushed her up against a wall, the sound from the speakers in the club caused the surface to vibrate against Willa's body, as Mitch pushed her head to the side and began kissing at her neck. Willa pushed Mitch off and began walking down the staircase, wobbly from the alcohol and her tall, black suede booties. She grabbed his hand again when they made it to the bottom of the stairs and he followed her towards the end of a slightly less dim hallway. Mitch glanced around, the walls were covered in graffiti and stickers and chewed gum, and the music was muffled, but still decipherable through the ceiling. 

Willa opened the door to the women's restroom and crouched down to glance under the stalls. It was empty. Mitch followed her in and reached up to the metal arm at the top of the door, locking it closed. Mitch suddenly got pushed against the door by Willa, who ran her hands through his hair and pressed her lips against his. He leaned down, looped his hands under her thighs, and picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist, still kissing wildly at him, and suddenly felt the sensation of cold and wet porcelain against the bottoms of her bare legs. 

Mitch pushed her chin up and left long, sucking kisses against her throat and jaw, as she fumbled to get his pants undone. He finally relieved her of the task, unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and pulled them down. Willa bit and pulled and sucked at his bottom lip, moaning into the action as he grabbed her waist, pulling her off of the sink to stand in front of him. 

Mitch turned her around, watching her press her delicate fingers into the white porcelain, and he ran his hands up her thighs, reaching them underneath the supple leather of her skirt, and pulled down her underwear. She glanced over at the full-length mirror on the back of the door and saw Mitch's cock, fully erect and waiting to be buried inside of her. Mitch looked up, she was staring back at him in the dirty mirror in front of her. 

"You trust me?" He asked her reflection. Willa nodded. "Do you want me?" 

Willa bit her lip. "God fucking yes."

Mitch smirked, placed his hand on the back of Willa's neck, and pushed her against the sink. She gripped onto the sides as she felt him push her skirt up around her waist. 

"Oh god." Willa moaned loudly, as Mitch pushed his thick cock inside of her pussy; knowing that she was wet, but not actually checking. Mitch let out a loud exhale as he explored her body from a position that he had been to afraid of experiencing with her up until that morning. He felt his length fill her up completely and he shuddered at the sensation of his hips meeting her ass. 

 Mitch began to pick up his pace, and his strength, fucking Willa with the speed and force of a man who was probably about to be caught by bouncers. Mitch watched as she moved one of her hands from the sink, to up against the wall in front of her. He listened to her staggered breathing, muffled by the bass of the music from upstairs. 

"Harder." Willa said, barely audible amidst her moans.

Mitch obliged and began thrusting into her with even more force. Willa grunted and pushed back against his thrusts, causing Mitch to quickly lose control. She wanted him as deep inside of her as he could possibly get when he finished. 

"Fuck, baby." Mitch whined, as he watched and felt her pushing back against him. "Fuck." 

Mitch leaned forward, pressing his hand against hers on the sink, and gripping her shoulder as he quickly came undone. He pressed his body against hers again, and felt himself become drained of his seed. Willa moaned loudly as she felt his throbbing dick empty inside of her. Mitch collapsed his head onto her back and felt her heart racing against the back of her ribs. 

"You okay?" He asked as he pulled out, a drop of his cum quickly dripping onto the dirty tiled floor between her feet.

"Yea... that was...so good." 

Mitch walked over and unraveled a roll of toilet paper from the closest stall. He wiped himself up, tucked himself back in his pants and zipped them back snug around his waist. He wiped Willa up, and pulled her panties from her ankles back up around her, then pulled her skirt back down. He pressed his body up against her, her ass smushed against the porcelain once again. 

"So that was okay?" Mitch asked, placing his hands on her hips, and staring into her hazel eyes. 

Willa nodded. "That was the hottest thing ever... but you owe me."

Mitch smirked. He knew she hadn't finished. He fully intended on repaying the debt. "I know."

"What time is it?"

Mitch looked at his watch. "2330."

"Do you think Steven will be pissed if we leave early?"

"Yea, I doubt we were even really going to see Steve again tonight." Mitch commented, reaching up to unlock the door. 

"Why's that?" Willa asked, standing next to him with her hand on the handle of the door.

"Oh, Steve is definitely going to take that girl home and have sex with her, so I really don't think he'll be pissed if I take _this_ girl..." Mitch gestured to her. "... home with _me_ and have sex with her until _she_ comes."

Willa grinned and followed Mitch out of the club.

 

 

 


	19. Day 80

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa's time in New York begins to wind down, but not before running into someone from Willa's past and discussing the prospects of their future.

"This sandwich is really good." Mitch said as he went in for another massive bite. 

"Oh I know.. I love this place.." She looked around as she took a sip of her Italian soda. "I spent many, many late nights in this coffee shop finishing papers and studying. The, uh, staff used to know me so well tha-" Willa paused and looked behind Mitch at the person who was ordering at the counter. "Oh god..."

"What's wrong?" Mitch's senses immediately went on high alert. 

Willa leaned forward, her face filling up with red heat. "Uh... we haven't really talked about my past relationships, but I think we're about to have to.." Willa glanced behind Mitch again, and covered her mouth when she made eye contact with the man speaking to the cashier. "Oh shit.. okay, um, I dated a guy for about, all of college? Uh, I genuinely thought that he was going to be the man I was going to marry and I almost didn't join Stan at the Barn in order to start a life with him. We put a deposit down on an apartment in D.C. and two months before we were supposed to move in together, he cheated on me... was cheating on me... and moved in with the girl he cheated on me with... and they are both right behind you." 

"Do you want to leave?" Mitch asked her, seeing her uncomfortably fidget in her chair. 

"No, I would say that it is probably too late for that." Willa looked up. "Brian... Jenna..."

"Hey, Will.. How are you?" The tall, handsome brunette man said, completely ignoring Mitch's presence. 

"I'm good.. How are... oh, wow, you're engaged." Willa looked at the gold band on Jenna's finger. "Congratulations." Willa hid her hands under the table, and felt Mitch grab them. He looked her in the eyes as he pulled the rose gold, with a large quartz stone, ring off of her right hand and slipped it onto her left ring finger. He smiled and gave her delicate fingers a small squeeze. "I'm sorry, I'm being so rude this is Mitch." She gestured with her right hand. 

"Willa's fiancé." Mitch stuck his hand out and firmly gripped Brian's, who winced as he shook. 

"Oh Willa, congratulations. Can I see?" Jenna laid out her hand in front of Willa's face, waiting to see her engagement ring. Willa hovered her hand over Jenna's, not really wanting to touch the girl that she loathed for so long. "Oh....... it's.... unique." Jenna said condescending. 

"It was her mother's." Brian said, grimacing and recognizing the ring. 

"So what do you do, Brian?" Mitch asked, sizing up the man in front of him. 

"I am the Executive Producer for C-Span 2 in Washington." Brian said confidently. 

"I have a lifestyle blog." Jenna interjected without prompting.

Willa hid a smirk behind the sip of her drink. "What do you do?" Brian asked Willa.

Mitch spoke up, feeling particularly possessive and protective in that moment. "Will and I work for the State Department. Foreign Service Officers. We just got back from assignment in the Middle East." Mitch used their cover stories. 

"The, uh, Secretary of State was just in the Middle East, wasn't he?" 

Willa nodded. "Yea, we were helping him with the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks." Willa lied, trying to make Brian feel lesser for not even working at the main C-Span channel. 

"Bri.." Jenna whisper-whined, wanting to not be a part of the conversation any longer, and seeing their food waiting to be picked up at the counter.

Brian glanced over at the woman tugging on his arm. "Go grab it and I'll be right over." He gestured to their meal, and Jenna left with nothing more than a wave.

"Um, Will, can I talk to you outside for a minute?" Brian turned his body away from Mitch and spoke low.

Willa laughed quietly through her nose and smiled at Mitch, then looked up into the gorgeous green eyes that she once thought she'd look into forever. "I'm not sure what the point of that would be." She shook her head. 

"You never answered any of my calls or texts or emails, I just want to talk to you really quick."

"I'm good. I have nothing left to say to you. I moved on." She smiled at Mitch, and he felt a zap of electricity hit his heart. He smiled back at her. 

"Please, Will... You've gotta hear me out." 

Mitch was bored of Brian's inability to take 'no' for an answer. He stood, smirking as he towered over the man in front of him, and watched Brian's eyes look down at Mitch's hands that he was wringing together. "I think you should go. She said she doesn't want to talk to you. Your fiancé is waiting at a table for you, so now you're being disruptive to two lunches. It was interesting meeting you." Mitch stuck out his hand to firmly shake Brian's again, and Willa hid her quiet laughter with her hand. 

Brian grimaced at the large, strong and veiny hand waiting in front of him and decided he did not want to have his hand crushed a second time. He patted Mitch on the bicep, glancing up at his face as he felt the muscles under his jacket, and backed away slowly, returning his gaze to Willa. "Well, hopefully I'll see you around again. Nice meeting you, Mitch."

"Yea, probably not." Willa fake smiled at him as he turned around to join Jenna.

Mitch remained standing. "You wanna get out of here?" Willa smiled big and nodded. "Alright, let's go to the Met." 

Brian watched as Willa placed her hand in Mitch's and they stepped out of the cafe. Mitch opened the passenger side door of the Aston Martin DB5, parked in front, for Willa, and walked around the front to get in the driver's seat. Willa looked over at Mitch, not caring about what kind of show they were putting on anymore. 

"You didn't have to do that with the ring." She twisted the thin and delicate rose gold band on her ring finger, and looked up at Mitch. 

"It was the least I could do. He was a douche." Mitch grasped Willa's left hand and brought it up to his mouth, pressing her fingers and the back of her palm against his lips. Willa smiled, melted into the seat and watched as Mitch pulled out onto the street, still holding her fake engaged hand in his lap.

* * *

 

Mitch watched her light up as they stepped through the doors into the Impressionist Painters section of the European Paintings, 1250-1800 permanent exhibit. He watched her bypass every famous Degas, Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh, to make a beeline for an oil painting of two young girls sitting at a piano. He saw her shoulders move up and down as she breathed a sigh of relief. Mitch made a mental note of how she looked in that moment. Her long hair fell in soft brown curls over her shoulders and back. She held her black clutch and black satin bomber jacket in her right arm, her left hand playing with the fabric on the back of her short gray knit dress. He pulled her iPhone out of the pocket of his jeans and opened the camera app. He angled it so that she was squared in the center of the portrait in front of her. She glanced over her shoulder, hearing the camera shutter noise, and spotted Mitch snapping pictures of her. She smiled softly and at him and then went began walking towards the next painting. 

"Who is this?" Mitch asked, his lips lightly brushing her ear. He closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around her waist, and nuzzled his cheek against her soft vanilla scented hair. Willa rested her body against his and smiled. 

"Auguste Renoir. He's been my favorite since I was a little girl, and it's just been a long time since I've seen any of this in person." She grinned, and turned around. "You taking pictures of me?" 

"Maybe one or two." 

"I'm surprised, it's not like you can keep them in your room at The Barn." 

"Yea, but we can print them and keep them in the safe at your apartment, right?" Mitch smiled down at her. 

"You are so cute sometimes, I don't even know what to do with you." Willa grinned and shook her head. 

"You could kiss me." Mitch said as he pressed his tongue against his lips. Willa hooked her fingers around his maroon sweater and pulled him closer. She pressed her soft lips against his and felt them softly suck against her top lip. She inhaled deeply through her nose and felt the eyes of tourists and strangers falling on them as they kissed in the middle of the room. 

Willa pulled away and smiled. "Should we head up to the roof and get a drink?" Mitch sucked on his lips and nodded. 

* * *

 

He walked over to her, leaning against the concrete ledge that overlooked downtown and Central Park South, and he placed her plastic champagne flute next to her elbow.

"Thanks, baby." She said with a small smile, the orange hue of the sunset glowing against her face as she stood on her tippy-toes to give him a peck on the cheek. "This was a nice day... started out kind of weird, but ended nicely."

Mitch took a sip of his beer and nodded, pulling her jacket closed as the wind blew through the rooftop garden on top of The Met. "I feel like, with the lives that you and I live, it's easy to forget that we're only twenty-five and we once lived normal lives that involved ex's and cousins and brothers." 

Willa nodded and sipped her beverage. “You didn’t have to pretend you were marrying me this morning. I’m pretty sure Brian hated you from the moment he saw you at the table with me. You already had him feeling like shit.”

Mitch reached out and touched her cheek, with a soft smile resting on his red lips. He didn’t say anything for a few long moments, just narrowed his eyes and smiled, clearly thinking of the right thing to say in that moment. Mitch finally licked his lips and tucked a hair that was being blown in front of her face behind her ear.

“I really wanted it to be clear to him that you are with me.. that you’re mine.” Willa bit her lip softly, trying to hide how big of a smile she actually wanted to unleash on him. Mitch dropped his hand down to her neck, slipping the tips of his fingers under the fabric of her dress. He pressed his body against hers, the hand holding his beer pressed against her back. “I was twenty when I started dating Katrina..” Mitch shook his head and smiled. “I was a kid. I didn’t know anything. I still don’t know much but I do know that this feels different than anything else I’ve ever been involved in, and I do know that regardless of how little time has passed, I am falling for you, Will. I want a future with you.”

Willa blushed a furious shade of red, and she pulled a windblown hair out of her long eyelashes. She looked up at him adoringly. “I want a future with you, and I am falling for you, and I need you to know that I am invested in this… in us.” 

Mitch smiled and nodded. He pressed his lips firmly against her forehead, and pulled her in against his chest. 

 

 


	20. Day 84

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan Brunski, the man who sexually assaulted and attacked Willa, returns to The Barn and throws everyone's lives into chaos.

"Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back." Stan slowed his speech and clapped his hands in front of him. He glanced around the group, a mischievous smile on his face. He inhaled and spoke again. "Alright. First of all, many of you may have noticed, we have a familiar face joining us. I hope you'll all welcome back Dan Brunksi to the group. Second, I am going to need everyone to come up and take one of these Glock 17M's. They are standard issue for firearm carrying CIA agents, which will be all of you." Stan gestured to the table covered in the government issued handguns and holsters. The group came forward to grab their gun and holster. "They are loaded and they have the safeties on, which is where they will stay unless you are told otherwise... These guns are your lifeline. I need them to become an extension of your body. You need to get used to their presence and their weight on your hip and the idea of always having them available for your use." Stan paused and looked at the trainees in front of him, examining their new firearms. "This is the only fucking warning I'll give any of you though. One fuck up with these guns, and you are out. You need to know how to clean them, store them, and shoot them. But the only place you are permitted to shoot them is here..." Stan finished speaking and stared out into the sea of attentive faces. "Go fucking practice with them." He yelled, annoyed at the trainees without them having been back for more than twenty minutes. 

Mitch went to his usual shooting lane and glanced over at Willa, seven lanes over, expertly shooting at her stationary targets. He glanced over at Brunski, Collins and Clemens, in their own lanes, practicing with their own guns. A lump formed in Mitch's throat and he felt hatred begin to bubble in his chest. He fired off twelve of his seventeen rounds into the bullseye in his lane, the thick paper torn to shreds by his vicious assault. He reloaded his gun and turned around to see Stan staring at him, an annoyed and confused look resting on his face. 

Mitch approached Stan and holstered his weapon. "I didn't feel like wasting the bullets, sir. I know how to fire a Glock." 

Stan scowled at Mitch's arrogance. "No, Willa knows how to fire a Glock. You could use the practice, Rapp."

Mitch narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "Yes, sir." He walked back to his lane and emptied his magazine into the targets, over and over, with perfect precision until target practice was over for the morning. 

* * *

 “Collins.” Mitch stared at the large man, who was walking by himself back to the Main House for lunch.

Collins' default look when it came to Mitch was fear. He turned on his heels and walked back to Mitch, who had stopped to let everyone else in the group pass them on their way back from a long run in the woods. “What’s up, man?” Collins said, barely making eye contact with him, always letting him know that he was willing to be submissive to Mitch.

“Have you talked to him yet?” Mitch asked, sternly.

Collins shook his head emphatically. “No. I told you I wanted no part in that. I plan on avoiding him like the plague.”

“That’s not helpful to me, Collins. I need to know what he’s planning with Willa. I don’t want anything else happening to her.” Mitch took a step forward and Collins took a step back, a silent dance occurring between them.

“I really… I get that, and I wanna make amends, you have to believe me, but I don’t want anything to do with this, Rapp. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough. You owe her.” Mitch took another step forward and grabbed Collins by the elbow, applying his thumb against the pressure point on the inside of his arm.

Collins twisted at the pain, and contorted his face. He would let Mitch beat him to a bloody pulp again if it meant that it would absolve even a fraction of his guilt. “Please, man. I would rather quit the program altogether than get involved with Brunski again. I will never be able to forget what part I took in what we did to her. I am so sorry.. You have to believe me.”

Mitch did believe him, and he released his grip on Collins. “You may not be able to forget, and you shouldn’t be able to. Willa will never forget.” Mitch seethed through his teeth.

Collins nodded, remorsefully. “I don’t have anything to report, but don’t put your guard down. Dan is a sociopath. He felt no remorse for what he did, and now that he has a gun on him all day, every day, he is all the more dangerous. You and Willa should watch your backs.” Collins gave his last piece of advice before turning around and heading up the stairs to the Main House. Mitch paused, taking in what he had just been told, and then followed him up the stairs.

 

* * *

Stan grabbed Willa’s arm and pulled her aside in the foyer of the Main House, allowing all the other trainees to walk past into the main part of the house to go to lunch. “How was the city, kiddo?”

Willa half-smiled, saddened that her time there was over. “It was great, I saw Jeannette and Katie and Carl. I checked on the cars and planted hydrangeas at the graves. I ran into Brian and Jenna…” Willa recapped her trip for her uncle, conveniently leaving Beth and Mitch and Steven out of her story.

“Did you tell Beth? I bet she had a field day when she heard that.” Stan said, his eyes widening at the name of Willa’s ex.

“Yea, I called her on the train and then I called Aunt Mere… I’m surprised she didn’t tell you. She had me recap every last detail of the encounter for her.”

“Yea, well, she still thinks I should’ve put a hit out on him after he did that with Jenna.” Stan and Willa chuckled at how invested Stan’s wife was in Willa’s love life. “And no, she didn’t tell me, I came back to reintegrate Brunski back into the program two days ago.” Stan watched Willa’s face for any tells when he said Dan Brunski’s name.

Willa nodded nonchalantly. “That was considerate of you to leave your vacation early. Campbell or Aiden couldn’t have done that?”

“You’re sticking with the ‘ _nothing happened_ ’ story, W?” Stan questioned her.

“Yes, sir.” Willa was saved from further questioning, by the door opening and Collins walking through. Startled by their presence, Collins turned to Stan.

“Can I speak with you in your office, Sir?”

Stan glanced at Willa, and then at Mitch who walked in the door as Collins spoke, finally nodding when neither of the other trainees faces divulged that they knew what was going on. "Come on."

Mitch stopped next to Willa and subtly rubbed her arm with the tips of his fingers. "I wonder what that was about.." Willa said, looking up at Mitch's strange expression. 

"I think Collins is about to quit."

Willa snapped her head between Stan's office door and Mitch's face. "What?!" 

"I told him that I wanted him spying on Brunski for us, and he said that he'd rather leave the program then be involved with Dan again, and I took that as an empty promise but.." Mitch gestured towards Stan's office. 

* * *

The first day passed and Dan hadn't even come within fifty feet of Willa. After lunch, a rumor began to circulate that Collins had gotten kicked out of the program, and when Mitch checked his room and saw it was empty, he knew that Collins had left. The fact that Stan had not pulled him or Willa aside yet though, proved that Collins did not mention the truth of what had happened between him, Clemens, Brunski, and Willa all those weeks ago. Mitch was frustrated by the lack of truth. After dinner, Mitch snuck into Willa’s bedroom.

* * *

 

Mitch sat on the edge of her bed, watching her sit on the floor, pulling her hair up into a ponytail and bending over to stretch down to her toes. They had just finished practicing how to disarm each other from an attacker with a knife or a gun, and Willa was stretching out her knees, sore from hitting Mitch in the stomach and sides. She glanced up at him, wringing his hands in front of him, his eyes no longer watching her but watching his mindless movement. She knew when he was holding back.

She leaned back, the palms of her hands flat against the floor behind her, her knee cracking loudly as she stretched her legs out in front of her. “What?”

Mitch looked up at the sound of her voice, echoing through the quiet room. He rubbed his tongue against the backs of his teeth and kneaded his fingers anxiously against his face. He shook his head, and she knew he was about to finally speak. “I am so fucking frustrated with watching him walk around here and you not doing anything about it.”

“Oh god, not this again. Mitch, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“You do know what to tell me!” Mitch raised his voice at her, and she rose to her feet. “You are just so stubborn.”

“You think I’m stubborn? That’s really what you think?!” Willa shook her head profusely and scowled at him. “Stubborn…” She repeated his word, scoffing at the end.

“Will..” Mitch reached forward to grab her wrist as she paced in front of him. She shoved him off of her.

“Stubborn, Mitch? It’s not stubbornness, it’s paralyzing, gut-wrenching fear. IT'S FUCKING FEAR, MITCH!”

“OF WHAT?!” He was certain that someone probably heard them arguing but he was having a hard time controlling his temper.

"OF IT HAPPENING AGAIN. HIM COMING AFTER ME..." She lowered her voice and stepped back from Mitch, and paused. "Of him coming after you..." She shook her head and walked over to her bed to sit down. She looked back up at Mitch, who was staring at her, anger still deep in his eyes, and apparent in the wrinkles on his forehead. "I'm terrified that Stan or whoever won't do anything because I waited so long to report what happened that there is no real proof anymore... I, I'm petrified that my uncle, the man who raised me, will never look at me the same way again when he finds out. I'm terrified that the Agency will think that I am not tough enough to handle trauma or pain or that I can't fight off three idiots like Brunski, Clemens and Collins without you swooping in to save me... and honestly, I'm terrified that they will find out about us and what that could mean or do to our careers and-"

Mitch finally cut Willa off. "I can't promise that none of that will happen. I don't want to lie to you, Will. I _can_ promise that until you do tell someone, you're not going to be safe. Dan is dangerous in so many different ways and you will just not be safe."

"If you think I don't know that, Mitch, then you must think I'm an idiot." Willa shook her head at him, and looked pissed. 

Mitch narrowed his eyes further at her. "I don't think you're an idiot, Will, but you are also sort of fucking acting like one!" Mitch raised his voice again, and threw his arms in the air, exasperated. 

"You are such an asshole sometimes. I can't fucking stand that you keep doing this to me. Some days you act like the only sane decision is to wait until I'm ready to make that next step in this process, and then days like fucking today, you act like the biggest motherfucker on earth." Willa stood back up and yelled back at him. 

"FINE! I'll just leave you alone tonight then!" Mitch turned around and walked out of her bedroom.

"God fucking damnit." Willa laid back down on her bed, hot angry tears suddenly beginning to stream down her cheeks and temples. She wiped her hands at the salty water but soon her fingers were soaked. She looked up quickly when she heard the door open again, and saw Mitch standing in the doorway with a clean change of clothes, blankets and his pillow. "What are you doing?" She asked, as she watched him throw his pillow on the floor, peel his shirt and shorts off and throw them by her laundry basket. 

"Going to sleep." Mitch said curtly, as he billowed the blankets in the air, trying to straighten them out before placing them on the hardwood floor.

"Why on my floor?" She inquired, wiping her finger under her nose. 

"Because I'm mad at you but that doesn't mean I'm going to abandon you or I stop caring. I sleep better knowing that you're safe." Mitch settled the blankets on the floor and stared at Willa's red and puffy face. Now he was both angry and upset. He walked over to her desk, grabbed a couple of tissues, and walked over, and wiped her cheeks. 

She took the tissues from his hand and blew her nose. She balled the damp tissues up in her delicate fingers, and stared up at her occasional jackass of a boyfriend. "You don't have to sleep on the floor." She whispered. 

"You in a cuddly mood, Will? Cause I'm sure as fuck not." Mitch said harshly, quickly regretting how truthful he was being. 

She understood though. She wasn't. She was still just as pissed off at him. They were both right and they were both wrong and there was nothing that either of them could do about that fact. There wasn't going to be a resolution tonight, and Willa just wanted to go to sleep. "No. I'm not. You're right." She said, staring up at him still. 

"Okay then, I'll be on the floor tonight."

"Fine." Willa said, turning to get into her bed. Mitch grabbed her wrist and pulled her back towards him. 

"Hey... No matter how much of an arrogant dipshit I act like, you're still my girl, right?" He stared into her bloodshot, hazel eyes, still only holding her by her left wrist. 

Willa nodded. "For whatever stupid reason, yes. You are always mine." She still looked at him with annoyance, until he leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips. He quickly broke away, turned off the lights, locked the door, and laid down on the unforgiving floor. 

They laid in dark silence for a few minutes before Mitch finally spoke again. "Will?"

"What, Mitch?"

"I'm still mad but I'm sorry I yelled at you... and I don't think you are an idiot nor do I think you are acting like one. I shouldn't have said that."

"No, you shouldn't have said that." She agreed, not letting him off the hook easily for his unnecessary earlier comment. 

"You're kind of hoping I wake up with like a crick in my neck or something, aren't you?" Mitch's lips curled up slightly in the corner. 

"A little bit." Willa's lips did the same. 

Mitch chuckled quietly. "Goodnight, Wilhelmina Hurley."

"Goodnight, Mitch." She shook her head, turned over, and fell asleep with a bit of a smirk on her face. 

 


	21. Day 87

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan decides to take the trainees down to Kentucky to practice their tactical driving skills on a professional racetrack and to get a work out in the state's largest indoor rock climbing facility. Mitch hears a rumor about something that Dan had said about Willa, and he finds himself even more on edge, only for him and Willa to find a new way to blow off steam together and attempt to reconnect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> could be read in conjunction with Jeff Buckley's 'Hallelujah' where the * indicates... if you want. idc either way.

Almost five days had passed by since Dan Brunski, Willa's attacker, had returned to The Barn and so far, nothing had happened. Brunski kept his distance and did not approach or interact with either Mitch or Willa, but Mitch still was on high alert. The odds had been evened since Peter Collins, one of the three men who had helped in attacking Willa on more than one occasion, had left The Barn for good, but Dan still had the element of surprise and it left Mitch tense and hyperaware. 

Mitch and Willa had not been themselves since Brunski's return. They had been fighting and Willa had been pulling away, trying to protect herself from further pain. Willa had also been pulling away because she was afraid of what Mitch would do if he saw how bad her post-traumatic stress was actually getting now that she was seeing her sexual assaulter on a daily basis again.

All of the trainees had been given standard, government issued, fully loaded Glock 17M handguns to carry with them at all times. Willa had really taken her new assignment to heart. She had sent Mitch away from sleeping on the floor in her room, for the past two nights, as they were still not back to sleeping together. Mitch could not respect Willa's decision to take her time in telling her story, but he would not disrespect Willa by telling her story for her to those who needed to hear it. They were at odds with each other, and were growing more and more frustrated and stressed by the day. Mitch's distance left Willa on edge. She had begun sleeping with her loaded firearm under her pillow, always ready in case Brunski came back. 

* * *

 Stan Hurley, Mitch's mentor, Willa's uncle, and the man who ran The Barn, had packed all of the trainees onto a charter bus early that morning, and drove them down to Kentucky, where they were practicing tactical driving on an old NASCAR racetrack. After the tactical driving lesson, he was going to took them to the biggest rock climbing park in the state, and then to a hotel for the night. They would return to The Barn the next morning. Willa finished her session, and Mitch watched as she, Reza and Julian all climbed out of their respective cars and were praised by Stan for their excellent skills. He, Rob, and Clemens climbed into the three separate cars and began their test.

After they spent most of the afternoon at the racetrack, Stan brought them to a massive rock climbing park and unleashed them into a brutal workout. Mitch and Julian were descending one of the more difficult and steep rock face, side by side, when Julian paused towards the top.

“Yo, Rapp.”

Mitch, shirtless and sweaty, stopped and turned back. “What’s up?” He watched as Julian caught up and leaned back against his harness, holding his ropes in his hands.

“You’re friends with Willa, right?” Julian asked, reaching into his chalk bag to get some of the sweat off of his hands.

Mitch nodded, and narrowed his eyes. “We’re friends. Why?”

“Does she know that Brunski has a major issue with her? Well, with the both of you, frankly?”

Mitch felt his stomach leap into his throat. “What are you talking about, Casablancas?”

Earlier, when you were up on that other rockface racing Reza and Rob to the top.. I guess, Willa was watching the three of you and I overheard Brunski say some shit about her, that didn’t sit well with me, and I was wondering, since you’re also her friend, if you thought I should tell her.”

“What’d Dan say?”

“ _RAPP! CASABLANCAS! WE’RE BACK ON THE BUS IN TWENTY. FINISH UP AND GET YOUR ASSES DOWN HERE!_ ” Stan yelled from the ground.

Mitch and Julian began climbing again, quickly making it to the top to ring the bell, and then propelling back to the mats below. They grabbed their things and sat next to each other on the charter bus back to the hotel. Mitch kept his eyes on Willa, safely sitting next to Rob a few seats ahead of them, laughing at whatever dumb thing Rob was inevitably saying.

“So what’d he say?” Mitch asked again. Julian looked around for Brunski or Clemens. “They’re in the back of the bus. What’d Dan say about Willa, Julian?” Mitch was becoming agitated.

Julian licked his lips and shook his head, glancing over at Mitch. “I was standing next to him, watching everyone else on that moderate climb that you were on, and he was intently watching Willa watching the three of you. He leaned over to Clemens, but I overheard him..."

* * *

Mitch waited for a few short moments, then saw the door open, revealing Willa wrapped in a fluffy white towel with her hair pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head. She smiled softly and stepped out of the way, giving silent permission for Mitch to come in. He heard the heavy door latch behind him and watched as Willa walked through the door of the dimly lit and steam-filled bathroom. He followed her, the corners of his lips turning up into a smile.

“You weren’t worried that maybe it could have been someone else knocking on the door?”

Willa snickered and shook her head, sitting on the ledge of the tub, adjusting the knobs as the water filled. “Well, considering every other guy in this hotel is down at the bar trying to pick up one of the various pretty pharmacutical reps, and you know I'd kill you if you were trying to do that, I kind of knew it was you.” She smirked up at him. "I also looked in the peephole." She snickered, and he couldn’t help but smirk back at her.

“I could go down there and get one if you really think that’s where I should be…” Mitch teased her.

Willa shut the water off, and stood, dropping her towel to the cold tile below her feet. She walked towards Mitch, pressing her fingers softly against his stomach, finally hooking them under his shirt, pulling it over his head, his hair falling messily around his face as she tossed the shirt to the side. “I don’t think,” Willa spoke slowly. “that that will end as well for you as this will…” Instead of a period, she finished her sentence with a kiss on his lips.

Mitch dug the tips of his fingers into her hips, leaving indents in her naked flesh as he pulled her close against him. The contact of her skin against his skin, made her feel like she was on fire, and he melted into her kiss. Her hands wandered down to his pants and began pulling them apart, tugging them down his hips. Mitch inhaled the thick, wet air in the bathroom and felt his head lightly spinning. He felt the tension of the fabric of his jeans around his ankles, and the comfort of her hands on his body and he placed his hands over hers on his hips. He pulled her tightly against him again, and pressed his forehead against hers, closing his eyes and embracing the warmth.

“You okay?”

“Just been on edge after what Julian told me earlier.”

Willa wriggled her hand from his grip and placed it against the stubble on his cheek. She massaged her fingers against the prickly hairs and he leaned his face into her touch. “Come on..” She pulled him towards the tub and watched as he got in first, the water rising and the bubbles surrounding his chest and arms. She got in after him, stepping in between his legs and sitting with her knees scrunched up towards her chest so that she could face him.

“If you really wanted me to relax, you’d come lay on top of me right now.” Mitch whispered, watching the steam rise out of the tub in front of her face. He saw a smile spread across her lips, and heard the water in the tub sloshing as she spun around and leaned her back against his chest. Mitch reached up and pulled the white curtain, on the shower rod above, towards the other end of the bathtub. It was just the two of them, finally safe from the outside world. Mitch wrapped his arms around Willa's body, and gently rubbed his wet fingers up and down her arm. He shut his eyes and listened to the quiet popping of tiny bubbles in the water around them. 

"I have felt so disconnected from you lately... so far away.." Willa said, breaking the silence between the two of them, and causing Mitch to open his eyes. She continued telling him what had been on her restless mind lately. "And for someone who is trained in killing people, I have never felt more unsafe in my life."

Mitch frowned and held Willa a little tighter against his body, even pushing his long, hairy legs harder against her shorter and smooth ones. He whispered into her ear. "Do you feel unsafe right now?"

He watched as her hands stopped rearranging the bubbles on the surface of the bathwater, and dove underneath to where he could not see. He then felt the soft pads of her fingers press against the tops of his hands, as she shook her head against his collarbone. "This is the safest I've felt in days. I know I’ll always be safe with you." She whispered.

He pulled his hand out from under the water and used the wetness on his palm to slick her hair back from her cheek. Mitch kissed the side of her head where his hand had just been, and he heard Willa softly coo. "Then what's wrong right now, baby?" He spoke low in his quiet, husky voice.

"I want to be able to relax again." Willa replied, her eyes still closed and her head still resting in the crook of his neck. Mitch glanced down and noticed the tiny wrinkles etched into her forehead and he slowly began to smirk.

"I could help with that.." 

Willa heard the mischief rising in his tone, and she smirked. "Hmm?" She egged him on. 

"Mhmm.." Mitch pressed his lips against the shell of her ear and very lightly sucked. She hummed at his action. Mitch moved his lips slightly lower and tugged at her earlobe with his teeth, and a louder moan came from within Willa's throat. She shifted her weight against his body again when she felt his member slightly harden against her back. Mitch snaked his hand down her bare and wet skin, quickly making contact with her clit. He very slowly began to rub his middle and ring finger on his right hand against her sensitive bundle of nerves and she licked her lips and her eyes fluttered open. She turned her head up towards his gaze, a sleepy and pleased look resting on her face, and she connected her lips with his in a lazy and happy kiss. 

"Should we get out and get in bed?" She asked, wondering if he would rather have sex on the comfort of a mattress instead of against the porcelain of the bathtub. 

Mitch pressed his lips lazily against hers again, feeling intoxicated by the warm water, the foggy air, and her body pressed against his. He then shook his head and smiled. "Just relax, baby. Let me take care of you." Mitch rubbed slow, and consistent, circles against Willa, feeling her breathe steadily and deeply against his chest. After a few minutes, Mitch felt her twitch against him and he kissed her neck softly. "Tell me when you're close, baby." He whispered in her ear. 

"I'm so close." She replied breathlessly, digging her head back against his shoulder. Mitch suddenly pulled his hand away and laced his fingers together over her stomach. "What are you doing?" She said, borderline frantic. 

"Helping you relax." Mitch answered, quietly smug with a small grin resting on his mouth. 

"Ugh, Mitch..." Willa whined and ground against him. "How is this helping me relax? You're teasing me." 

Mitch left short and soft kisses against her temple and squeezed her against him. He was in bliss being so close to her. "What do you want, baby?" He asked.

"You. I want you inside of me." She shimmied gently against his hard cock on her back, and sent a shiver down Mitch's spine.

Mitch snaked his hand up her torso and chest, making sure to take his time over her breasts, and he pressed his fingers against her chin. He pulled her lips towards his and he sucked on her lower lip. She let out a small whimper and he went back in for another elongated kiss. Mitch wrapped his fingers around the bottom of Willa's left thigh, lifting it out of the warm water, and draped it over the edge of the tub. She turned her head slowly and began leaving warm kisses on his neck and jaw, and Mitch's heart began to race. 

 "You want me inside of you, huh?" Mitch teased, lifting Willa slightly off of him and positioning his erect cock against her opening. 

"Please." She purred and dug her nails into his muscular thigh underneath her. She moaned loudly as he slipped inside of her and felt her tight walls constrict around him. He breathed deeply at the new sensation and hugged Willa back against his body, pressing her more firmly against him. Mitch dipped further into the warm water, his feet pressed flat against the other end of the tub, and the water rising up around him and Willa. She whined and squirmed on top of him, wanting the feeling of him sliding in and out of her. 

Mitch smirked and obliged. He thrust up into her slowly a few times before stopping. He hovered his hand around her pelvis, keeping her from grinding down onto him and smirked against her bare skin. "You still close?" He whispered, his voice barely echoing through the tiled room. 

Willa shook her head. "No. You killed it." She replied with an indignant whine. 

Mitch laughed and kissed the side of her neck, then dropped his hand back towards her engorged clit. He began slowly rubbing in circles again, a slow and soft in and out of her every thirty seconds or so just to maintain his hard on. His free hand was pressed against her ribs, with Willa's hand over his, their fingers intertwined. He listened to her deep breathing and caught her free hand wrap around the edge of the tub, her knuckles turning white, indicating that she was close but refusing to tell him this time. A quick spasm in her stomach was his next tell. Mitch pressed his fingers more firmly against Willa's clit when she spasmed and the walls of her pussy constricted around Mitch's thick cock, and he moaned. Mitch had to try very hard not to just fuck Willa wildly right then. He breathed deeply and went back to slowly rubbing her clit, and building her up to the edge of climax. A few more thrusts and he felt Willa twitch again, so he stopped. 

"You're doing this on purpose. I am so close and you're doing this on purpose." Willa began to reach down to just finish herself off, but Mitch grabbed her by the wrists and held her hands in the air. 

She caught his smug grin as she turned around to look at him, his eyes were a deep amber and full of playful lust. "I am doing this on purpose." Mitch admitted before kissing Willa on the shoulder and then stopping her from reaching her fingers down to her clit again. 

"You think you're the only one who can do this?" She smirked, suddenly grinding down onto Mitch's thick cock. Mitch abruptly inhaled in Willa's ear and she grinned. She tightened her walls around him again and he let out a small moan, growing louder as she ground down against him once more. 

"Fuck... Will... fine.. fine. What do you want?" 

"You." 

With that, Mitch directed her to stand up by pulling her wrists upwards, and he quickly got up behind her. He ripped the curtain to the bath open, leaned down to place his arms around Willa's waist, and suddenly hoisted her over his shoulder like she was a ragdoll. Willa squealed with delight and admired his muscular ass as he stepped out of the tub and out towards the bedroom part of her hotel room. He tossed her on the bed, and she bounced slightly in place from the springs in the mattress. Willa watched as Mitch climbed from the foot of the bed toward her. She put her hands out for him and he collapsed on top of her. 

He hovered over her, smiling and leaving light kisses on her lips, when he felt her shiver underneath him. "You cold?" Willa nodded sheepishly. Mitch pulled back the covers next to her on the bed and they got underneath them. She wrapped the duvet over his shoulders, their wet bodies sticking to sheets and each other. She pushed the wet hair, matted to his forehead, up and off of his face. He smiled, and felt her hand snake around the nape of his neck to pull him in for a kiss.

Mitch lined himself up with her entrance once more, and pressed his way inside. She was ready for his intimate connection. Mitch stared deeply into Willa’s eyes as he steadily thrust in and out of her. Her mouth opened and he breathed in her quiet sighs. Their bodies moved in sync under the ruffling noises of hotel cotton, and Mitch leaned his damp forehead against hers. The consistent movement of his fingers against the throbbing bundle of nerves between her legs, and the euphoric feeling of his abundant length filling her up, couple with the closeness that she had been craving with him since they had left their safe haven up North, pushed her well over the edge.

The way her eyes shut tight, the skin below her lip was pulled taut, and her nails dug love lines in his back, brought him close, but it was the way that her walls closed around his thickness that threw Mitch into the abyss of a much needed orgasm.

* * *

 She took in the subtle features of his face. She traced the creases around his mouth where the frown lines used to live before he met her. She dragged her fingers lightly across the soft pink flesh of his upper lip. He lay with his head resting against a pillow, his hair dried in messy waves, simply relaxing and enjoying the way she touched him. Willa swept her index finger across the prominent mole on the left side of his face, and then quickly replaced her finger with her lips. She felt the chiseled cheekbones on his face pop out against her kiss. She pulled back and saw a smile on his face that hooked from one ear to the other and straight to her heart.

“Stay.” She whispered her only request.

Mitch had the fingers on his right hand gently caressing the side of her arm. He brought them up to the hand that had been exploring his face, but was now resting against his collarbone, and he squeezed it tightly. “You know I would if I could, W.”

His rebuff hurt her on levels that he could not have foreseen; on levels that she did not expect. She needed him. She had never felt more uneasy in her life, and she needed his weight in her bed and his limbs wrapped around her while she slept. She wouldn’t ask him a second time though. Logic would prevail in the morning and she would no longer harbor resentment for him getting out of her bed to get dressed and leave her anymore.

“What are you going to do the rest of the night?” Mitch asked as he buttoned the fly of his jeans, glancing up at Willa, tucked snuggly under the white sheets on the bed.

“I guess I’ll order some room service, watch some TV and go to sleep.”

“You didn’t bring a book?” Mitch asked with surprise in his tone.

Willa shook her head. “Wasn’t in the mood.”

Mitch frowned. He knew she was upset. He also knew that there was very little that he could actually do. Mitch knelt down next to the bed, took Willa’s hand in his, and began kissing the back of her hand and her fingers. He rested her palm against his stubbly cheek, craving the connection that he felt when she touched him, but not getting the full experience as her head was now elsewhere. “If Reza bags one of the girls downstairs, I’ll come back and sleep with you tonight.”

Willa barely moved her head up and down. She knew that that was unlikely and she didn’t want to be made hopeful. “Okay.”

“Willa..” Mitch sat down on the bed next to her, and cupped her cheek in his large, veiny hands. “I want to keep you safe, and we both know the way to do that is for me to show my face downstairs….” Mitch paused and stared into her hazel green eyes. “You are everything to me… My entire world.” A small wrinkle creased into the skin between his brows, and he pulled her into his arms. It felt different though; like hugging a stranger. He could feel her tension and her walls building back up with each passing minute as he prepared to leave.

Willa was beginning to disassociate from her life and the things that she loved and made her feel happy and protected. It was her emotions shutting her down from the pain of Mitch leaving and her enduring another fearful night alone. “You should get downstairs.” She whispered into his chest.

Mitch swallowed the lump in his throat, and forced himself off of the bed. His rage boiled inside of him, and he had one face stuck in his mind: Dan Brunski. _Anger, anger, anger._ It always came easiest to him. He turned before he opened the door to the hallway, and glanced at Willa, still holding the sheets up against her chest to cover herself. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night, Mitch.” She said, forcing a pained smile that neither of them bought into. With that, he turned and left.

* * *

The clock on her nightstand blinked 10:14PM, and Willa decided that Mitch was probably not coming back. She dragged the wooden desk chair over to her bolted and locked door and she shut off the hall light. She walked over to her jeans, lying on top of her duffel bag, and pulled at her gun. Willa checked the magazine, confirming its contents, and placed the full Glock on her bedside table. She turned the volume down on the TV, and shut the rest of the lights off.

She jolted forward in bed, scrambling for her gun, and knocking the alarm clock off the stand as she struggled. The white lights that flashed throughout the room during the infomercial on the hotel TV, allowed her to see that it was just a dream. She lowered her gun from her pointless aim, and placed it on the sheets beside her. Willa reached down to grab the clock that fell on the floor. She read the face: 11:52PM. She turned the light on her nightstand back on, and shut the television off.

Willa shifted onto Mitch’s side of the bed and placed the Glock in her lap. She ran her fingers over the textured grip and the cold metal on the barrel. Willa sighed, and stared at the wall above the television. She could feel herself unraveling. Brunski’s return threw her life upside down, and a resolution was going to have to be necessary sooner than later. But for that night, she did not sleep again, for the fear of his face entering her thoughts far outweighed her exhaustion.


	22. Day 93

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa struggle with her inability to tell Stan about her attack.

At 0600 hours, the trainees gathered in the dining room for breakfast.

At 0645, they filed outside to the gun range to attend their daily morning shooting practice. Willa had been practicing particularly hard with her Glock. 

At 0815, the trainees took their seats for language seminar in The Schoolhouse. That day was an intensive oral test in Arabic. Willa passed with flying colors. She only showed up to Arabic seminars because Mitch went. 

At 1030 hours, Campbell replaced their Arabic instructor, and ran through a grueling lesson in encryption and other technical tradecraft techniques. An in depth discussion of the darknet took Willa's mind off of the eyes that she had been feeling on the back of her head all morning. 

At 1300, the trainees filed into the Main House for lunch. Willa and Mitch joined Rob and Julian out on the balcony attached to the dining room, and enjoyed the warming weather. 

At 1345, everyone filed back into The Schoolhouse for Spanish lessons. Willa sat next to Julian and Mitch and paid close attention since Spanish was a language that she was lacking in her repitiore.

At 1500, Irene had arranged for the Agency's in-house psychiatrist to come in to speak with the trainees about compartmentalization in regards to violence and death in the line of work. Mitch's eyes remained glued to Willa, who seemed entirely too interested in what the doctor was saying. 

At 1630, Aiden led the group out to the obstacle course, and watched as they all killed themselves trying to get through it faster and faster each new time. 

At 1730, Stan met the trainees in the gym for hand-to-hand combat training. Willa practiced with Reza and Mitch practiced with Rob. 

At 2000, when everyone's bodies were filled with fatigue and scrapes and bruises, Stan released the group to dinner. Mitch sat on the other side of Rob, watching Willa eat as Rob talked his ear off about a takedown technique that Mitch had used in training earlier. 

At 2035, Mitch knocked on Willa's door. 

* * *

 

"Hey."

Willa looked up at him standing in her doorway and her face remained stoic. "You done icing me out for the day?"

"You done letting Dan walk around here like he never did a single thing to you?" Mitch asked, a mild hint of frustration undercutting his words. 

 Willa shook her head and sat up in her bed. "I get that patience isn't what you're known for, but I thought you understood that this has to be done on my terms."

"I do understand that, but, Will-"

"No. No 'but'. Telling Stan could affect my career and it could affect my relationship with him. He's basically my father. The thought of telling him how I was overpowered and violated and made to feel dirty and disgusting and..." She trailed off, a scowl resting easily on her face. "I will tell him when the idea of telling him, doesn't make me want to immediately vomit."

Mitch felt guilty for being so short with her the past few days since Dan Brunski had made his uneventful return to The Barn. "I'm sorry."

"I know. I know this is hard for you. Try to remember that it's hard for me too."

Mitch scratched at the hairs on his lip, glanced down and nodded. "I know. I'll try harder."

"Are you sleeping in here tonight?" Willa asked him, already willing to forget his behavior from the day. She understood that he was acting out of frustration and fear. 

"If you'd let me. I miss you." Tiny wrinkles formed across Mitch's forehead as he whispered those words to his girl, who he had managed to keep at a distance all day. 

Willa smiled softly, cocking her head to the side and resting her cheek on the back of her hand, her arm pressed against her bent knees. "Then come get in bed already..." Her smile widened.

Mitch sighed in relief and closed the door behind him. He pulled his Glock out of his waistband and placed it on her desk, the place where he usually kept it when he would sleep over, ripped his sweatshirt off over his head, placing it over the back of her desk chair, and walked up to Willa to kneel beside her bed, snaking his arms across her sheets to grab at her. She giggled and squirmed. Mitch bit his lip and stared up at her. "I have... I promised Rob that I would show him that takedown and then I need to do laundry.. I really need to do laundry."

Willa pursed her lips to the side and then rolled her eyes playfully. "Fine... I'm tired though so I'm probably going to crash soon. I'll leave the door unlocked?" 

Mitch nodded his head against her mattress and then stood. He cupped her cheeks in his hands and pressed his lips against hers. He pulled away and looked in her hazel eyes. "I'm crazy about you."

Willa couldn't even begin to suppress her grin. She stared up at his caramel colored eyes and blushed. "Oh, dear god, Mitch Rapp, if you knew the ways that you made my heart race..." She shook her head in his hands, and connected her lips with his again. 

Mitch bit his lip, exhaled through his nose and had to keep himself from saying those three words. "You kill me..." He laughed softly. "I'll try not to wake you up when I come in." Willa nodded, felt his scruff against her cheek as he kissed her once more, and watched him close her bedroom door behind him.

* * *

 

Mitch carried his laundry basket under his left arm as he walked up to his and Willa's section of the hall. He opened his door, placed the basket on his desk and walked over to Willa's room. He opened the door quietly, the light flooding into her dark bedroom, and saw her shift in her bed at the stimulation. Mitch sighed. He still had to take a shower from his training with Rob, still had to fold his laundry, had been hoping to read a bit more of George Orwell's, _1984,_ and most importantly, did not want to wake her up. He closed her door quietly, listening to latch hitch in the frame, and decided to just sleep in his bed tonight. 

He finished folding and put away all of his clothes, then laid on his bed, relaxed in a pair of blue and orange Syracuse Lacrosse shorts, his wrist resting against his forehead, as he folded the paperback dystopian classic in half and picked up where he had left off when he had read last. He felt his eyes begin to heavy as the hour got late, and he eventually dozed off, the book resting on his bare chest. 

Mitch shot forward in his bed at the sound of a gun being fired. He looked around his dimly lit room and wondered for a split second if he had dreamt the noise. He heard it again. The sound of a Glock 17M being fired coming from outside of his door. He quickly got to his feet and felt the cold hardwood against his soles as he sprinted to Willa's door. 

He swung the door open to her room and saw Willa in her bed, illuminated by the hallway lights, with blood splattered on her face, her Glock in her hand, and Dan Brunski's lifeless body slumped over her. 

 


	23. Day 94

Mitch stood in the doorway to his bedroom, watching, along with many of the other trainees, as Aiden and Campbell lifted one of the stretchers from the pool, with a white sheet from Willa's bed, covered in blood. Dan's lifeless body didn't quite fit on the orange stretcher, and Mitch saw his pale hand drooping from underneath the blanket. Stan sent everyone back to their bedrooms and threatened to kick them all out of the program if any of them came out until they were called. Mitch glanced at his alarm clock above his bed; it was 0145 hours and he was wide awake. He felt numb and confused. He did not sleep a wink that night. He sat on the edge of his bed, his hands clasped together in front of him, and stared at his closed door. 

The sun began to rise and light poured through Mitch's window, when a soft knocking aroused him from his trance of staring at his hands. He looked up at saw Stan open his door. "Come with me."

Mitch propelled himself off of his bed and followed behind the older but still gifted CIA agent as he walked down the hall towards his office. Stan gestured for Mitch to sit in the chair at the front of his desk, while Stan shirt the door behind him and finally sat down behind his desk. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, staring at Mitch across from him. 

"Tell me what happened, in your own words, between Willa and Dan Brunski." Stan prompted Mitch. 

Mitch nodded once and took a deep breath; this massive weight that had been bearing down on Mitch's chest for months was about to be lifted and Mitch was relieved. "From what I've been told and from what I've seen firsthand, Dan Brunski had been-"

Mitch was interrupted by the door to Stan's office opening. He whipped his head around to see Irene Kennedy walking in, and Stan rising to his feet to give Irene his chair. "Please continue, Mitch." Irene said as she lowered herself behind Stan's desk. 

Mitch glanced at Irene and Stan and then continued with his version of the events that had transpired. "Dan Brunski was an incredibly unstable individual. I still don't know if he was sexist, jealous, or just a psychopath, and maybe it was all three of those things wrapped up into one dangerous and deranged package, but one thing was clear early on for me: he was not happy with Willa's presence here."

"So what happened, Rapp." Stan rolled his wrist in a circular motion, urging Mitch to get on with the story. 

"We need all the interactions that you know of that took place between Dan Brunski and Willa, Mitch. Anything you can remember." Irene interjected, using a kinder approach than Stan. 

"You want the whole story?" Mitch asked, and Irene nodded. "Fine. The second day I was here, I was sitting at lunch with Rob Russells and Julian Casablancas..."

* * *

 

"Why didn't you come to me when it happened, Willa?" Irene sat in Stan's empty office, in one of the pair of club chairs sitting in the corner, with Willa sitting across from her, a stoic and apathetic look on her face. 

Willa shrugged. "No offense, Irene, but you're not exactly accessible to us, and furthermore, I had it handled." 

"I'm accessible to you though, Willa. I've known you since you moved in with the Hurley's when you were a little girl." Willa shrugged again, and Irene felt guilt sweep through her body. "Well, I meant to be accessible to you. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear enough before now." Willa stared at the wall behind Irene's head, emotionless and silent to her apology. Irene sighed and picked up a thick manilla folder with The Agency's seal stamped on the front in black ink. She flipped through the file and pulled out a series of pictures, which she began to lay flat on the small, round table in between the two of them. Irene tapped on the top picture, looked up at Willa, and spoke again. "You did that to Brunski?" Willa glanced down at the picture. It showed Brunski's many facial fractures and swollen eye and lip; all injuries from the night that Willa slammed Dan's head into the tile of the shower stall repeatedly after he had sexually assaulted her. Under the top picture of Brunski's face, Willa was able to make out pictures of his shoulder and arm and the various other places in which she had left marks on him when she fought back. 

"Yes, Ma'am." 

Irene put the pictures of Brunski away, and picked up two more files. She laid out a few more pictures on the table and looked at Willa's detached expression. Irene cocked her head to the side and tapped on the pictures on the table again. "Did you do this to Peter Collins and Jacob Clemens?" 

Willa did not need to look at the pictures to know what they showed. She shook her head and made eye contact with Irene. "No, Ma'am. Mitch Rapp did that to Clemens and Collins. He walked into the bathroom as Dan Brunski was in the middle of assaulting me. Mitch heard a noise, sensed something was wrong and helped me to fend off my attackers." Willa spoke clinically about the event, then broke eye contact, and fixated back on the position on the wall behind Irene's head where she had been watching previously. 

Irene raised her eyebrows and stared at the pictures for a few moments longer, before placing the three files of the perpetrators on top of the table. "You and Rapp make a good team." Irene admitted, before clasping her hands together and leaning forward towards the expressionless woman in front of her. "Willa.... Willa.." Willa snapped out of her trance and locked eyes with the Director. "I want to apologize." Irene shook her head and stared at Willa's shoes. "I believe your story. You and Mitch gave identical accounts, except for the parts where he was not actually involved, and we took some testimonies from some other trainees that had noticed aggressive behavior directed towards you and Rapp from Brunski and his cohort."

"Fine." Willa was feeling particularly apathetic towards the situation at that point. 

"Willa, we failed you, and yet, you took care of our mess...." Irene paused and then continued, shaking her head as she went. "Brunski, Clemens and Collins would have become the CIA's mess eventually anyway, with the behavior that they displayed just at The Barn. The Agency owes you a debt of gratitude, Willa.." Irene tried to look into Willa's eyes, but the contact was just not there. She sighed. "We are going to take care of you now. Well done, Hurley." 

Willa narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow, confused at the gratitude and encouragement. "So nothing will happen to me even though I broke the facial bones of another trainee and then shot that trainee and killed him?" She asked trepidatiously. 

Irene shook her head and leaned back in her chair. "No. He attacked you first. All of this was self-defense. Whatever you want, the Agency will provide it." Irene assured Willa. "I am working on your paperwork for making you an actual agent and getting you out of this place and into the field, and I am having your things moved out of that room permanently, in the meantime, as we speak." 

Willa finally showed some emotion in the form of panic. "I don't want to leave that room."

"What?" Irene was shocked. 

"I mean, I obviously don't want to sleep there tonight, or until it's refurbished, but... yea, I almost got raped in that room.. twice, but I also defended myself and eliminated my attacker in that room, and on top of that, it has been my home for almost three years. Clean it, repaint it, do what you have to do, but I don't want to be moved permanently." Willa explained. 

Irene nodded her head and smiled, impressed by the fortitude and bravery that radiated from Willa. "Done, but really, Hurley, I don't know that you'll be there that much longer anyway."

* * *

 

 

Mitch opened his door a mere few seconds after hearing the light rapping on his bedroom door. The hour was drawing closer to lights out at The Barn and Mitch still had not seen or heard from Willa since the night before. He was a giant bundle of nerves. When the wooden door moved away, Mitch saw Julian standing in the hall in front of him. 

"Hey."

"What's up, Casablancas?" Mitch asked, disappointed that it wasn't the girl that he loved. 

"Crazy day, today, huh?" Mitch nodded suspiciously. "I, uh, was heading back to my room from the bathroom and I saw Willa moving into the empty room at the end of the hall upstairs. I think it was Brian Keller's old room." Julian reported, casually. 

"Why are you telling me this?" Mitch questioned. 

"No reason. Just thought you'd want to know where your neighbor went." Julian pointed to the room behind him; Willa's original room. 

Mitch narrowed his eyes and stared at Julian, and then relaxed when Julian smiled and stuck out his hand in front of him. Mitch shook it and watched as Julian smiled genuinely. "Thanks for letting me know."

"Anything for my friends." Julian said quietly as he began walking back towards his room, sharing one final knowing glance before turning around completely. "Night, Rapp."

"Night." Mitch watched the young and handsome Puerto Rican man walked into the stairwell and out of sight. Mitch understood the subtext of that conversation and appreciated Julian's loyalty and discretion. He rubbed at his eyelids, the fatigue really setting in to his face, and headed up the stairs towards Willa's new bedroom. 

 


	24. Day 102

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over a week has passed since Dan Brunski's death and Mitch and Willa readjust to life without his constant threat.

_"Willa, it's me." Mitch whispered loudly into the place where the frame met the door, his one hand pressed up against the wood grain of her new bedroom door and the other gripped around the cold metal of the knob. "Will..." He tapped the door lightly again with his fingertips. He pressed his forehead against the door and sighed, he had no idea what to feel in that moment but he knew he wouldn't feel right until he saw her._

_Finally he felt the knob move under his fingers and the door inched open, revealing a wet-haired and exhausted looking Willa behind it. "I was dozing off, I'm sorry."_

_Mitch shook his head, letting her know that she had nothing to be sorry for. He was grateful that she was able to sleep at all. But Mitch felt uneasy. He stood in her doorway, him on the outside, her on the inside, staring back at her drowsy eyes. For the first time since the day he met Willa, he had no idea what to say. "Are you okay?" felt stupid. "How are you?" felt like it could be too overwhelming. "I love you." was definitely not the right place or time. "I'm glad he's dead." was the truth but was not what anyone needed to hear at that point in time._

_"I'm sorry, Mitch." She broke the silence for him, and his heart broke into a thousand pieces at the sound of her distressed voice._

_He gathered his confidence in their connection and wrapped his arms around her waist, stepping into the door and embracing her tightly against him. "I don't even want to know what you think you have to be sorry for, Will, especially to me. You did nothing wrong." He whispered into her ear, and felt her small fingers, sharply digging their way into the fabric of his shirt, pulling her body closer to his. He felt her chest move heavily against his and he brought his hands up to cup her cheeks. The moment his fingers touched her warm face, he felt hot, wet tears rushing against his skin. "Baby, wh- what's going through your head right now?"_

_Willa stared back up into Mitch's perfect brown eyes, blurred by her own currently faulty orbs, and broke away from his grip, walking towards her new bed. "I'm sorry that I let him come back here. That I never did anything. You begged me and begged me and begged me. You knew this would happen. I'm sorry I let it get to this point." She sat on her clean sheets, and buried her head in her hands, the floodgates having been unleashed._

_Mitch felt a lump form in his throat as he watched the woman he loved more than anything in the world break down. He rushed towards her and kneeled in front of the bed, forever worshipping before her. He held his hands around her back, rubbing warmly up and down under her shirt and against her skin. Willa glanced down at him through teary eyes, and tried to force a smile at his kind gesture. He pulled a hand from her back and wiped the back of his fingers against the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Wilhelmina Hurley." She looked up when he said her full name. "Please let that be the last time you apologize to me over any of this. I don't want it and I don't accept it..... I'm sorry that I didn't protect you... that I wasn't there, that I was next door asleep because I wanted to read and fold laundry instead of climbing into your bed and locking your door and protecting you from that monster. I'm sorry that I let it get to this point. I'm sorry that you had to do what you had to do."_

_Willa cried harder over Mitch's apology to her. In that moment, her heart hurt more because of his pain and guilt over the incident. She loved him with every fiber of her being and she hated seeing him in turmoil. "It's okay. No, Mitch, it is. I don't want your apology either."_

_Mitch licked his lips and fought the lump in his throat, choking back the tears that threatened to unleash from his tear ducts. He pressed his scruffy cheek against Willa's soft and smooth thigh and he closed his eyes when he felt her fingers gently run through his long hair. Her crying had ceased as she focused on the soothing action of playing with his hair. He felt more unconditional love for the woman sitting in front of him than he had felt for any other person in his life. He was grateful that she was safe._

_"Willa, what happened?" Mitch's voice and question caused Willa's hand to stop and rest against his scalp. He looked up, cupping her hand in his own and pressing her palm against his lips. He stared into her bloodshot, and vibrant hazel eyes._

_Willa inhaled deeply and contorted her face. "Dan climbed into my bed... I thought it was you for only a moment..." She pressed the base of her hand firmly against the middle of her brow bone, and grimaced. "He cozied up to me under my sheets, and woke me up when he pulled the hair off my neck and shoulder and kissed... I knew they weren't your lips. They were too different. I uh... I kind of froze." Mitch closed his eyes as she continued her story. He was in physical pain from her words and the images that they put into his brain. "He reached his hand up around my throat... and squeezed gently and then he spoke."_

_Mitch swallowed the lump in his throat and spoke in a deep and raspy tone. "Was he still trying to pretend to be me?"_

_Willa shook her head and closed her eyes, her brow furrowing as her lids tightly shut. "No... No, he uh, he asked me if the gun on my desk was mine."_

_"It was mine."_

_Willa nodded and half-smiled. Mitch's habit of leaving his gun there was the reason that she was alive. "I um, told him it was mine and he said 'Good, I don't need mine to kill you then.' and placed his on the window ledge. He said some stuff about how he knew I was fucking you and that the Agency didn't need common whores in it's ranks and how it was insulting to him and the rest of you that I had fucked my way through the program..."_

_Mitch looked mortified. "You just laid there and let him say all of that to you?"_

_Willa contorted her face, deep wrinkles burrowing into her forehead, and she shook her head vehemently. "No, I was struggling against him the whole time. He had his hands wrapped around my throat and my face."_

_"Fuck." Mitch ground his teeth together and clenched his fist tightly against the bed sheets under Willa. He was having a hard time looking up at her as she told the story, regardless of his knowledge about the ending._

_"He said he wasn't going to let me ruin his life or his career......" Willa looked off into blank space above Mitch, and he glanced up at her extended pause. "'You can be fucking sure I'm going to fuck your lifeless corpse after I'm done with you too.'" She repeated his words apathetically, shutting down her emotions again like she had earlier in the day._

_Mitch couldn't remain kneeling in front of her any longer. He was livid. He was rabid. He was borderline certifiable. "Just finish the story.... please." He managed to grumble coherently in her direction._

_Willa stared down at her empty hands, just hours before covered in gunpowder residue, blood and brain matter. "I fought him back with all of my strength. I clawed at his face and managed to get his hands from around my throat a few times. He should've just shot me because that was the only way I was going to let him take me down. We fought and fought and my gun fell in between the bed and the wall. It was caught on the frame. I kept reaching for it but I couldn't get a grip. The last time I managed to get his hands off of me, I reached over and grabbed it, pushed on the trigger safety, pressed it against his cheek and pulled my finger."_

_"Why'd I hear a second shot?" Mitch asked._

_"I blew a hole through his mouth with the first one, and he sat up like something from a horror movie. The second shot was dead through his eyes... and that was it. You came bursting through the door, grabbed your gun off my desk, and pulled him off of me." Willa shrugged. "That was that."_

_Mitch looked at her with such pain, horror and concern. The only thing he could think to do was sink his back against the door. The two of them stared at each other silently from across the room for a few minutes._

* * *

 

Willa jerked forward in bed, panting and adjusting her eyes to the darkness around her. She instinctively reached under her pillow for the Glock 17M, that she had been reissued after the "incident" with Dan Brunski just over a week before, but slipped her hand back above the cushion when she realized it was just a dream. She surveyed her surroundings and saw Mitch, sweet and peaceful and loving Mitch, quietly sleeping, his back turned to her. She shook her head and stared at him, very softly running her fingers through his messy bedtime hair. 

"I don't know what I would do without you." She whispered to him, knowing he was completely unconscious. 

She bent her knees and leaned forward to press her head against her legs, her arms hooking back to rub circles in the back of her head. It was just a dream.. just a nightmare.. just a horrible memory. She was back in the shower stall, Dan's hands covering her mouth and running over her body. In this reoccurring, alternate version, though, he slams her head against the tiled wall shortly after and knocks her out, and that is always when she wakes up. She hadn't had a single nightmare about the shooting. It wasn't bothering her in the way that people probably expected it to. It was still bothering her that Stan had barely been speaking to her, Irene had been hovering around The Barn with more frequency, Mitch had been angrier, and the rest of the trainees had pretty much put two and two together and surmised what had happened that led to Willa shooting Dan in the head twice and seeing no consequences for that action. Those were the parts that bothered her most late at night. The shooting, the brutal and unforgiving way in which Dan died, he deserved and she felt no remorse for that. 

She glanced at her alarm clock. 0415. Forty-five minutes until they would have to wake and part, get dressed and meet back at breakfast. She focused her eyes on the lock on her bedroom door. It was horizontal. It was still locked. It was just her and Mitch and it was just that same nightmare again. She sighed and adjusted herself back under the blankets with Mitch, little spooning him and pulling him tightly against her body. 

Willa felt her hand be caressed by his, her fingers intertwining with his long ones, and she nuzzled her face in between his shoulder blades. "You okay, Hurley?" Mitch whispered groggily.

Willa smiled and nodded. "Yes." She began planting a million little kisses against the cotton fabric covering his back. She heard him sigh contentedly and she nuzzled her face harder against him. 

"The flashback dream or something new?"

"Same old. But I'm actually, honestly okay. Logic prevailed and I remembered it was over... and I have you protecting me." 

"Damn right." Mitch pulled her hand up to his lips and pressed her silky skin against his stubble, scratching his face. She cooed softly and he planted a few kisses against the back of her hand. 

"Let's go back to sleep." She suggested and felt Mitch nod. 

* * *

 

Stan had not been at the barn for a few days, and neither had Irene. Willa was told by Campbell, before their fighting seminar, that she could move back into her old bedroom if she wanted that night. Willa was overjoyed, and excited to reclaim her former life. She excitedly told Mitch and he smiled, happy to see her enthusiastic about something, and happy that he would have her back across the hall again. They listened intently as Campbell explained in detail, with Aiden as his sparring partner, the various ways in which you can kill someone with your bare hands, snapping necks, punching out a xiphoid process or windpipe, shoving someone's nasal bone up into their brain with the base of your hand, and more for example. 

Willa practiced enthusiastically on Rob and Mitch smiled every time he caught a glimpse of her smile and laughter when she would mess up or Rob would get his ass handed to him by her. Reza was grateful for Mitch's distractedness because when he focused, Reza feared that Mitch was almost too skilled in what they were learning and that Mitch might get carried away and actually kill him. Reza had a point, although he didn't know it, because Stan taught Mitch how to do all of that in one of their many one-on-one training sessions. 

Willa settled into her old room after dinner and Mitch helped her to put her books back on the shelf, a few still missing to be replaced or cleaned because of the amount of blood and brain splatter that went across everything in her small bedroom. He heard her sigh, not in a good way, behind him. He turned around and saw her staring at him from across the room. "What's wrong?" His heart leapt into his throat in worried anticipation. 

Willa shook her head and rolled her eyes gently. "I'm just being dumb. I'm bummed that so many of them are still missing. I want my books back already." She lamented, and Mitch nodded, approaching slowly, and wrapping his arms around her neck, while simultaneously planting a kiss on her forehead. 

He pulled back and looked at her face, admiring the sharp contrast of her y/e/c irises and the whites in her eyes. "You sure you're okay, Will?" 

She nodded and smiled, pulling her arms up to grip his shoulders and kissing the bicep next to her right cheek. He smiled softly at her affection. "I was cleared by the therapist that Irene sent over and I've been feeling fine. Dan was going to kill me. His death was justified and I've been feeling... good, honestly. Just whining about my books, is all. I'm fine. I promise."

Mitch nodded. He didn't want to push her. "Wanna practice?" 

Willa's lips spread into a mischievous grin and she nodded. "Fuck yes."

* * *

 

 "Okay, so basically you press up their wrist like that... Mhmm, just like that, and you grab the barrel and pull. But it has to be all one fluid motion, so like.. this."

Mitch was showing Willa a different technique of disarming someone who has a gun pointed at you. Stan had shown it to him the other day during training and Mitch always got around to showing Willa the new things that he had learned. The two of them had swiped a weighted, plastic practice gun from the gym and were in her bedroom, in nothing but their underwear, working on the new technique. The gym had been closed that night so the mats could be deep cleaned and they didn't like skipping their late night training sessions. It was a normal reminder of what their lives were like together before the shooting, and helped the both of them feel like they were getting back to a place where they were safe and comfortable. 

"Okay, like this?" She asked, completing the motion that Mitch had shown her before. 

"Yea, but a lot quicker.. I would've had enough time to pull the trigger and at the very least, you would have gotten your hand blown apart." 

"Okay... like this." Willa repeated the disarming. 

"Better. Do it again." 

They repeated the exercise a few more times until Willa got it down. She was always a quick study. 

"Okay, I got it. I'm bored of it now. Can we just have sex already? You're, like, standing here all sweaty and shirtless in front of me, all abs and abs... and all I can think about is your muscles and your dick.. and your hair.. God damnit, Mitch.." Willa shook her head at him.

Mitch burst out laughing. "So, you would have gotten that twenty minutes ago if I had just put a shirt on?" 

"Fuck.. probably." Willa shrugged. She was joking, but also pretty serious. Ever since they started having sex, Willa had a hard time focusing when Mitch was anything less than fully clothed, and even then, she knew what was underneath and she was ravenous for him. 

Mitch snickered again and stepped towards her, wrapping her up in his arms and leaning down to kiss her. "I think you were having trouble disarming me because you think I'm sexy with a gun." 

Willa laughed. "That is true too... This relationship may end up making me into a worse spy somehow."

"Impossible." Mitch shook his head and lifted her off the ground. He carried her over to the bed, letting her body dangle in front of him as he walked, his arms wrapped around her and her toes only a few inches off the ground. He dropped her on the bed and leaned down on the hardwood floor beneath his feet. He kissed up her legs and back down, kissing at the purple bruises covering the tops of her feet. 

"What are you doing?" She smiled down at him, her head slightly tilted to the left, watching him rub and kiss her lower extremities. 

"Nothing." Mitch continued rubbing and kissing. 

"It looks like you're basically worshipping my feet." She chuckled. "Which you should." She joked and leaned back with a smirk. 

"I do. I basically worship the ground you walk on, Willa." Mitch said, no longer kissing her, but instead looking up at her seriously. Willa laughed at his comment and shook her head at him. "I'm serious. I would do anything for you, Will. I am just so..." Mitch paused and licked his lips. Willa sat up in anticipation of what he might say. "I am completely..." He wasn't ready. It still didn't feel like the right time. He sighed, bit his bottom lip and lunged for Willa instead, pushing her back on the bed, his left hand wrapped around the top of her head, and his right hand grabbing at the exposed skin on her thigh. 

He pressed his lips against hers and felt her lurch forward to kiss him back. He wasted no time in forcing his long fingers under her neon blue sports bra and grabbing a fistful of her breast. Willa moaned loudly against his lips and Mitch became more hungry for her.

Mitch tugged lightly on her hair, pulling her head back and exposing her neck. He sucked lightly on her throat and she purred and writhed underneath him. Mitch reached his hand down the front of her black leggings, and dipped his fingers between her folds. She was soaked. Mitch felt his primal instincts take over and he wrapped his fingers over the tight elastic waistband of Willa’s pants and underwear. He yanked down sharply, slightly ripping the fabric that laid over her hipbone. Mitch didn’t care. He stood in front of the bed, hooking both of his hands over her clothing, and ripped them off of her legs in one fell swoop.

Willa sat up on her elbows as she watched Mitch tossed her pants across the room behind him and then dropped to his knees in front of her. Mitch glanced up at her as he placed his hands behind her knees and pulled her towards the edge of the mattress. His eyebrows furrowed as he watched her chest rise and fall in anticipation of what he would do next, her eyes locked on him. Mitch placed his thumb sideways over Willa’s clit and pushed down. Willa shook at his touch. He pulled his thumb back up and replaced the empty space with his mouth.

Willa moaned loudly as she felt his lips suction around her clit. Her hands made their way into his long and thick brown locks and she tugged as he began his oral assault on her body. She writhed under his touch and breathed heavily, trying to stave off a too early orgasm.

Mitch pointed his tongue against her opening, licking up every last bit of her into his mouth. He happily and sloppily and greedily sucked and nibbled and licked at her, finding her responses to be most intense just above her tiny bundle of nerves. He listened as she breathed heavily out of her mouth and mumbled nonsensical words and sounds. His chin and nose and cheeks were covered in a sloppy mixture of his spit and her arousal and his jaw was becoming sore and tense but he continued with his self-appointed task.

He always knew he had her good when she spent less time talking and more time biting so hard on her lower lip that she’d likely draw at least a little blood. Mitch sucked and sucked and sucked just above her clit, and finally felt Willa slightly twitch. He placed his hand on her stomach, stabilizing her to the mattress so that he could finish her off when she finally reached her climax. He sucked with a bit more strength, wondering if she was starting to get raw or feel slight discomfort, but when he looked up and saw her covering her eyes with both of her hands, and he felt her thighs squeezing around his head, he knew she was more than fine.

Willa began to convulse, her breathing becoming ragged and soft huffs coming from her lips. Mitch left his lips attached to her clit until he felt her delicate fingers tug harshly at his hair, pulling his face away from her. She let go as soon as he ceased and he watched as her hands roamed her body, trying to physically catch and hold on to the last bits of her orgasm. Mitch stood, grinning at the sight in front of him and shaking his head. He was pleased with himself.

He turned and grabbed Willa’s leggings off of the floor, wiping his face with the spandex pant leg and tossing them and her underwear into the half full laundry basket in her open closet. He pushed his tongue against his closed lips and still tasted her in his mouth. He was feeling particularly insatiable for her in that moment.

Mitch leaned over the bed and kissed Willa on the shoulder. She lightly moaned and finally removed her hands from covering her eyes in order to look up at him. He was greeted with a sleepy and lazy smile from her and it made him grin. “That feel good?”

Willa nodded slowly and excessively. “You should let me take care of you now.” She whispered as she reached for his basketball shorts.

“Nuh uh.” Mitch grabbed Willa’s wrist and grinned down at her. He pulled both of her wrists together and placed them against the mattress, above her head. He held them there with his left hand, positioned his left leg between her thighs, pushed up against the wood of the frame and the cushioning on the side of the mattress, and dragged his fingers down the length of her body, landing back against her clit. “I can’t believe you thought I was done with you.” Willa squirmed at his light touch. “You still sensitive?” Mitch asked, cockily, watching Willa nod and furrow her brow. “Do you want me to stop?” He asked somewhat rhetorically. Willa shook her head and chewed on the side of her lower lip.

Mitch began a slow rub of his fingers against the entirety of her pussy. His fingers and palm on his right hand became soaked with her cum and arousal. She clamped her legs together but his thigh kept them from stopping his hand. She fought back against his hold on her wrists, almost breaking free a couple of times, but it just made Mitch more aggressive and more turned on. He stared deep into her eyes, an arrogant and prolonged stare, as he left the occasional kiss on her lips or throat or chest, all while applying gradual pressure and increasing speed against her engorged and raw clit.

“Oh god.” Wrinkles formed in Willa’s normally smooth forehead and he watched as she sucked in a short breath. The orgasm rolled over her like a wave that she couldn’t get out from underneath. She came up for air and opened her eyes, a stare that begged Mitch to cease his successful attempts to make her cum. “Okay… you got me. Please… I can’t ta-“

Mitch’s laugh cut off Willa in the middle of her sentence. “Okay, okay, baby. I’ll stop.” Mitch adjusted himself over his shorts and boxer briefs, and slumped down on the bed next to his girl. She turned over, shakily resting her leg over his, and curled up against his side. Mitch wrapped his arm around her and left small kisses on her forehead, as he stared up at the shadows that the branches from the tree outside illuminated by the full moon, were making on Willa’s ceiling. He suddenly felt the fatigue of working out and eating Willa out hit him. He closed his eyes and felt himself dozing off. “Will?” He shook her softly to wake her.

“Mmm?”

“I want nothing more than to just get undressed with you and get under these covers, but I should sleep in my own bed tonight.” Mitch admitted.

“Cause Stan hasn’t been around?” Willa asked, understanding Mitch’s concern.

Mitch nodded even though he knew that Willa’s eyes were still closed and she couldn’t feel it. “It’s been a few days, and I’m just afraid he’ll pop back in and find that I’m not in my bed.” He felt Willa nod against his bare chest and he squeezed her tighter against him.

When he let go slightly, Willa wiggled her way up to plant a long kiss on Mitch’s lips. “I get it. You’re probably right. Just wish you could sleep here.”

“You gonna be okay tonight without me?” Mitch asked, glancing down at her bloodshot and tired eyes.

“I know where you are.” She smiled and he felt reassured. Willa eventually rolled off of Mitch, after the two of them dozed off together a couple more times. He kissed her goodnight, and listened on the other side of the door as she got back in bed but did not lock her door. He was both relieved and tense over her neglect. The relief came because it meant that she felt safe again at The Barn, but the fear came because Mitch trusted no one else with the woman he sought to protect above all else.

 


	25. Day 103

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa's time at The Barn has finally come to an end as they get tapped for a mission on behalf of the CIA: to stop an illegal arms trade between Hamdi Sharif and a mysterious man named Ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This now picks up again with the clips from the trailers. So maybe give those a once over again and you'll hear some lines and stuff.

 "Willa!" Stan knocked loud and hard and made sure to announce his presence. Willa snapped up in bed and reached for her Glock, pushing her hand next to her bed, her new hiding place for it while she slept, only to pull away when she realized that it was just Stan waking her up abruptly. She looked around the room, it was barely light out. 

"The fuck is going on?" She said groggily, pushing her hair back from her forehead and rubbing her eyes, a permanent frown living on her face. 

"You've got a half hour to pack a go-bag with moderate climate gear." Stan told her. 

"What is this? The Assateague Island camping trip? Isn't it still a little too early in the year for that?" She questioned, not fully grasping what was about to happen. 

"No, kiddo, this isn't the camping trip. Training is over. You've been called up to the big leagues. You got twenty-seven minutes to pack and meet out in the driveway now." Stan nodded, with a fake half-smile. "I gotta go get your partner up."

"Fuck." Willa sprung to her feet and began ripping through her bedroom to find the proper gear for the vague tip of 'a moderate climate'. She placed  _The Great Gatsby_ on the top of her go-bag and zipped it up. She threw the black, lightweight duffel over her shoulder and walked down to the driveway. Stan opened the door to the large indistinguishable, American-made SUV idling in the gravel driveway in the front of the Main House. Willa, turned and saw Aiden descending the stairs behind her, and she snapped her head back when Stan said her name and gestured for her to give him her bag. She stepped up into the car and saw Mitch half-smile at her from a seat in the last row, and Irene turn her head to smile from the front passenger seat. Willa sat in the back with Mitch and had to fight the urge to take his hand in hers. Aiden and Stan loaded in after Willa and before she knew it, the car was moving towards the gravel road that led in and out of The Barn towards Williamsburg, Virginia. 

 "Does anyone want to fill me in?" Willa broke the silence in the car. 

Irene turned around, and gave her best calm and reassuring smile. "The two of you have been tapped for a mission. Mitch has already been briefly caught up, but you'll get your packets with the full parameters on the plane."

"The plane? Where are we going? How have we been tapped for a mission? Neither of us are technically agents yet." Willa was not usually this questioning of authority, but she was very caught off guard by all of this news. A large part of her never thought that Stan would ever actually let her leave The Barn, and if he did, she was certain she would be stuck behind a desk in Langley. 

"Willa, when you get back from this mission, Irene is going to put you in with the next graduating class from The Farm and you will be a full-fledged member of the Central Intelligence Agency." Stan explained, and Willa glanced over at Mitch, who was boring holes into the front of Stan's skull trying to keep his mouth shut, but curious what this meant for him. Willa glanced back at Stan. 

"What about Rapp?" She asked. 

Stan shook his head. He was certain he was right, and Irene was wrong, but she was his superior and what she said was what happened. 

"Mitch, you're done with training at The Barn. You've been done for some time, we just needed to wait until the mission was ready for you. You are Orion now. We'll make that official on the plane." Irene said to him confidently. 

Mitch nodded once at Irene. He felt that he was ready too. Willa was feeling less prepared somehow. Maybe because Mitch seemed to have a better grasp on what was going on. She continued with her line of questioning. "What plane ride? Where are we going? What is this mission? Someone has to tell me literally something, anything."

"We're going to Istanbul." Stan explained, finally giving Willa some insight into what she was pretty sure that Mitch already knew.

"What's the mission?" Willa asked. 

Irene spoke up again. "Four days ago, fifteen kilos of plutonium went missing, weapons grade. We think a catastrophic attack is imminent."

"We've been tracking an arm's dealer named Hamdi Sharif, who has ties with the Bahji terror group-" Willa couldn't help but allow those names to elicit a quick reaction from her. She glanced over at Mitch, who remained stoic, and she quickly mimicked his expression. Stan continued explaining. "-who have had a vendetta against Israel since the creation of the state in the 40s. We think that he is trying to smuggle it into Israeli state borders, set it off, and hold Palestine responsible..."

Willa cut him off. She understood Middle Eastern relations, and suddenly, she also understood how she fit into this mission. "...Essentially setting off World War III and basically, wiping the Middle East off the fucking map." Stan nodded grimly.

"We're trying to make sure that the sale is not final." Irene interjected. 

"Who's selling it?" Willa asked, catching an odd exchange of glances between Stan and Irene. 

"We're pretty certain that a man by the name of Ghost is the seller." Irene explained. Willa glanced up at Mitch, who, for a nanosecond, glanced back, and realized that this was the mission that Mitch had been training for for months. 

"You have forty-eight hours to track Sharif and Ghost and make sure that the sale is not completed." Stan explained. "The rest of the details and your exact assignments are in the files that we'll give you on the plane." 

"There's a fucking nuke in play. Don't mess this up." Irene warned as they pulled onto the tarmac at Andrews Airforce Base in Virginia.

* * *

 

Irene dropped them off and Stan and Aiden sat on one end of the small private jet, while Mitch and Willa sat across from each other on the opposite end of the plane. They were somewhere over the Atlantic, five and half hours into their ten and half hour flight to Turkey, when Mitch leaned forward and closed Willa's mission folder. 

"W, you've read it like thirty times. I know you understood and memorized everything after the first. You need to sleep." He reached forward and gently cupped her hands in his, eliciting a soft smile from the woman across from him. 

"I'm nervous."

"I kind of gathered that." Mitch smiled, one side of his mouth curled up a little higher than the other, a kind smirk that always made Willa feel woozy. 

She couldn't help but smile back at him. She loved that he knew what was going on in her head without her having to say. "I've wanted this for years... to be in the field, to be on a mission... to be a real agent, and now it's happening and I'm nervous. It's frustrating." 

"I know it's nerve-wracking, but Will, you've trained longer than any other CIA recruit, you've trained longer than me, you're one of the best, and they wouldn't have brought you on this if they didn't think you were ready." Mitch tried to ease her nerves. 

"You've actually been out there though, Mitch. You've been in the field without the backing of the Agency. All the training in the world can't compete with actual field experience."

"And now you're getting your actual field experience. Plus Stan and Aiden are here, I doubt you and I will even get any real action." Mitch hoped that wasn't true. He had a lot of pent up aggression after everything that went down with Brunski, and he was pleased with the person that was going to be the target of his violence.

"You're probably right.... although, Sharif.. how are you so calm about the fact that he's the one that we are going after?"

Mitch shrugged and leaned back, breaking his physical connection with Willa as his thoughts went to the beach the day that Katrina was killed. A terrorist attack orchestrated by none other than Hamdi Sharif. "I've been ready to kill him and wipe out the Bahji terror cell for years. If that day is today, then I'll be ready." Mitch said clinically, trying to hide the fury and inclination towards violence bubbling underneath the surface.  

 Willa nodded and went to open her mission folder again. Mitch snickered and quietly slammed his hand on top of it, keeping it closed. He gathered her hands up in his once again. He glanced behind Willa to check if he had woken Stan or Aiden, but they were still asleep. "Let me just go through it once more. Last time, I promise."

Mitch smirked and shook his head. "You don't need to. Listen, Will, it'll be alright. I've got your back, always." Mitch promised, holding her hands up to his lips, so she could also feel his words. 

"And I've got yours." She replied, in a calmer and more confident whisper. 

"Always?"

"Always." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyone who loves The West Wing will hopefully enjoy that mini shout-out to a fake terror organization.


	26. Day 104 (Part I)

"You're backup. You're gonna cover my ass, Rapp." Stan said as he, Aiden, Mitch and Willa disembarked from the plane on the tarmac at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. 

 "Yes, sir." 

"And nothing more. Don't fuck around with me, Rapp." Stan warned, glancing back at Mitch, who was walking next to Willa, behind him and Aiden.

"Yes, sir." Mitch said dryly. 

Stan turned around and kept walking, shaking his head at the fact that every time Mitch said 'Yes, sir.', it sounded more like he was mocking Stan than actually obeying him. "Annika?" 

"Yes, Sir, Agent Hurley." The tall and gorgeous Turkish woman leaning against the open driver's side door of a silver SUV on the tarmac replied to Stan's question, while also opening the trunk for them to place their bags in. 

"Annika is our friend from the MIT, the National Intelligence Organization here in Turkey. She's going to be your second while we're here, Mitch. Annika, this is Mitch Rapp, he's... a handful, keep your eyes peeled." Stan said disapprovingly, and Mitch narrowed his eyes at him. Annika stuck her hand out to quickly shake Mitch's and Mitch met her half way. 

He glanced back at Willa, who also shook Annika's hand, but kept her eyes on Stan. She looked bewildered. They all piled into the SUV and Annika peeled out of the airport, and towards the center of Istanbul.

"Sir?" 

"Yes, Willa?"

"If I'm not yours and Mitch's backup, what is my mission here... Sir?"  Willa asked, the annoyance and confusion apparent in her voice. 

"You're here to run surveillance with Aiden from this car and provide intelligence support and.. backup if I, or Mitch, or Annika, or Aiden can't get the job done ourselves." Stan was keeping her on the sidelines and Willa was pissed but not surprised. 

"Yes, Sir." She said, barely hiding her indignation. 

Mitch glanced over and saw Willa clenching her jaw and her fists. He felt awful that she was so angry, but a large part of him was also grateful that she was being kept out of harms way. She made eye contact with Mitch, pressed the tip of her tongue against her top lip and shook her head, exhaling loudly through her nostrils. She was irate. 

* * *

Mitch and Willa stood in a run down hotel room, which was serving as their home base while in Istanbul, listening to Annika and Stan exchange information about the target and get the two new agents up to speed. 

"We intercepted information that leads us to believe that they will be meeting to exchange the plutonium and the cash near Sultanahmet Square, near the Grand Bazaar, at 1200 hours today." Annika updated the group. 

"Good. Mitch, you and Annika will go down there to surveil the swap and tail them, nothing more." Stan addressed the two of them. "Aiden, Willa, you two will be on the outskirts of Sultanahmet running surveillance from the car."

"Yes, Sir." Aiden accepted. 

"What's the mission, Sir?" Mitch asked, noticing a key missing ingredient in the plan. 

"Eliminate the target." Stan replied. "But that's my mission, Rapp. You just need to confirm that the targets are there." Stan turned his attention to Willa. "You need to start getting us ear pieces and phones and the other surveillance equipment."

Willa nodded and got Stan set up first, with all the equipment: earpiece, mouth piece, burner phone, etc., that he would need for the mission. She set Annika up next with the same equipment. She picked up the third earpiece, meant for Mitch and pocketed it in her leather jacket. Mitch raised an eyebrow at her, wondering why she had just stolen that piece of equipment. 

"Agent Breen, we're out of earpieces." Willa addressed Aiden from across the room, and Mitch cocked his head to the side, even more confused as to what Willa was up to. 

"There are extras in the case in the car." Aiden replied. 

"Come on, Rapp." Willa said nonchalantly, walking out of the room and down to the car. Mitch grinned and followed her happily. 

"You're a tricky one." Mitch said, smirking as he followed Willa down a staircase to the ground floor. "Did you know that Aiden kept extras?"

Willa nodded as she held the stairwell door open for Mitch. "I've been with them all long enough that I know how he and Campbell and Stan all operate. I shouldn't have been so surprised that Stan was sidelining me." Willa complained. 

Mitch followed her to the parked silver SUV on the street and contorted his face at her. "Yea, so much for us having each other's backs out here..." 

"I've still got you. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Mitch. I promise."

Mitch nodded and smiled. He glanced up at the windows of the hotel room that looked out on the street and wondered if Stan was watching. He stepped under the hood of the trunk with Willa and felt that they were covered enough that he could have an intimate moment with her. He watched as she looked through Aiden's various equipment cases for the extra earpieces, and he felt his lips curl up. 

"Hey.."

Willa glanced up from the silver, metal case in front of her, and looked at a smiling Mitch. His smile made her smile, and she softly chuckled. "What?"

Mitch leaned down, cupping his hands against her cheeks, and pressed his lips firmly against hers. He felt her exhale through her nose against his skin and she snaked her hands underneath his black jacket, and against his soft black thermal shirt. She melted into the kiss and he held her close. They broke apart to catch their breathe and Willa nuzzled her head against his chest, not even minding that the large silver zipper running up the front of Mitch's jacket was pressing against her cheek. 

"You know, right?" Mitch asked quietly, causing Willa to look up into his big brown eyes, not entirely sure of what he was asking her. "You know how I feel about you, right?" 

Willa lightly shrugged and then nodded, feeling a light blush rise to her cheeks. "I know.. I think I know..." She furrowed her brow slightly, small wrinkles forming under the bits of brown locks that fell across her forehead.

"I, um, I haven't thought that there was a right time to say..."

Willa looked down at the space between them, she didn't even realize that Mitch wasn't holding her anymore. "I know. There hasn't been a good time to." She glanced up and saw Mitch nodding and staring at the space between them as well. He planted a soft kiss on her lips, and then stared into her lush springtime green eyes. "When this is all over, you can tell me then." 

Mitch nodded and smiled. He was grateful that he found a woman that was willing to work with his slow timeline and was so understanding. He watched as she turned her attention back to the cases in front of them in the trunk, and he decided to tell her about a secret he had been keeping. "Will, wait..." He lightly tugged on her arm again, turning her back towards him. "If something goes wrong here-" 

Willa cut him off, her heart immediately sinking into her stomach at the thought. "Mitch, don't even start." She put her hand up in his face, signaling to him that she didn't want to hear what he had to say. 

"No, Willa, listen, nothing is going to happen to me, but if something does go wrong, I need you to go home and check the bookshelf with the F. Scott Fitzgerald first editions. I left something there for you."

Willa furrowed her brow. "You left what?"

Mitch smiled and kissed her passionately once more, before breaking away and placing his arms to his sides. "I'll show it to you when we get home from here." Willa nodded and turned back to the cases, finally pulling an earpiece out for Mitch. 

Mitch adjusted it into his ear and switched on the rest of his equipment. "Alright, I guess I'm ready." He said aloud, as Willa closed up the metal cases and the trunk.

"Is that really what you're gonna wear?"  

Mitch glanced back at Willa, who was walking behind him with a slight smirk, then glanced down at what he was wearing. "Yes? What's wrong with it? You like these jeans.."

Willa laughed at the frown lines forming on Mitch's forehead and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. You look very sexy, baby, but Adidas? _Really_?"

Mitch playfully shoved Willa and shook his head, smiling again. "Oh, the Adidas thing again. In case I have to run... okay?" Willa nodded in a playfully serious way, as the two of them headed back up to the room.

* * *

"I think I see Sharif."

"Get visual confirmation, Rapp." Aiden said into the microphone in the backseat of the SUV, parked on the far side of Sultanahmet Square, the place where Mitch and Annika were currently trying to blend in with the tourists, but were really waiting for Hamdi Sharif, the notorious arms dealer to show up.

Mitch stood with his back to the massive and ornate fountain in the center of the outdoor plaza and lifted his phone up at an angle, pretending to take a picture of himself like the other tourists, but really snapping proof to send to Aiden and Willa. "Did you get it?" Mitch mumbled into his mouthpiece.

The picture loaded on Willa's computer and she hit the talk button on the microphone that Aiden was using the communicate with the two agents. "We got it, Rapp. It's him."

" _Follow him cautiously, Rapp. We don't want him spotting the two of you and spooking before he meets with the seller. This enemy dresses like a deer and kills like a lion, and that's what we've gotta do, but better._ " Stan said, from an undisclosed location. He had split off from the group to follow a separate lead, but was still in communication and was still calling the shots for the surveillance mission. 

"Copy that, sir. We'll be careful." Mitch said calmly.

"Try to stay in places where the cameras can follow you both so we don't lose you guys." Willa reminded Annika and Mitch through their earpieces. Mitch glanced up at a police camera on a streetpole and nodded once. 

"They're moving." Annika said, flanking Mitch and following Sharif and his bodyguard.

"Towards the cafe.." Mitch reported quickly. 

"Shit, do they have cameras in there, Willa?" Aiden asked as he typed on his computer, trying to find any backdoors he could hack into for the cafe's internet provider.

"Nope, and we just lost visual." Willa slammed her hand on the keyboard of her laptop and leaned back in the backseat of the car, suddenly filled with fear that Mitch was pretty much on our own. 

"Can you still hear us, Agent Breen?" Annika asked. 

"I've still got audio on you, Agent Sadik." Aiden confirmed. 

"Rapp, we still got you?" Willa asked quickly. 

"You've still got me." Mitch chose his words carefully for her.

" _Do you still have eyes on the target?_ " Stan asked.

"Yes, sir, and I believe a beardless Ghost may have just arrived too. Annika and I are sitting at a table observing." Mitch updated the crew. 

" _Keep your distance, Rapp. Observe only. I'm on my way to eliminate the targets_."

Mitch watched as a young white man with short brown hair and a five-o-clock shadow, not too much older than him, dressed in nondescript black clothing, sidled up next to Sharif at the counter of the cafe. He and Annika sipped on their Turkish coffees and pretended to make small talk, while Mitch kept his eyes sharply focused on the subtle conversation taking place between the two men at the counter. Mitch watched Sharif slide something along the smooth wood towards the man he assumed was Ghost. Ghost picked it up and then tensed. 

Mitch leaned forward and focused more, then snapped his head around when he heard Annika whisper. "I feel like someone is watching me right now."

Ghost leaned over slightly to say something to Sharif, who then searched the room for his bodyguard. "Something's wrong." Mitch said, as he slowly began to rise from the table, leaving his black bomber jacket resting on the back of the chair. 

"What's going on? Report back." Aiden said frantically into the microphone. 

Ghost turned and made eye contact with Mitch, seemingly the only other white male in the cafe, and Mitch's instincts went into overdrive. He reached for his Glock 17M, tucked neatly in the back of the waist of his dark blue jeans, hidden under his long black thermal, with the sleeves pushed up towards his elbows. He ducked out of the way as he saw the man, that he was now certain was Ghost, draw his gun and hold it with both hands in a very clinical and natural way. 

Ghost fired off the first shot, just barely missing Mitch as he ran, crouched towards the floor, away from Ghost. His first shot hitting an older local woman in the shoulder, dropping her out of her chair and onto the ground. People began to scatter and Ghost fired off a few more rounds. Mitch crouched down to get out of Ghost's barrage of bullets, and glanced out the open doors towards the street. 

"I've got eyes on Sharif." Willa reported. "He's getting into a car."

" _Where's Ghost, Rapp_?" Stan shouted through the earpieces. 

Mitch quickly surveyed the room and saw neither Ghost nor Annika. He went back to their table and saw her lying on the ground, with a bullet hole between her eyes and a pool of blood collecting around her head. "Target's gone." Mitch reported, his voice more frantic than Willa wanted to hear. "And Agent Sadik is dead." Willa's stomach jumped into her throat, and she suddenly felt sick. 

"They're getting away, Mitch." Willa spoke into the microphone, as she watched the black car, carrying Hamdi Sharif, pull out of the square. 

"What kind of car?" Mitch asked, walking out of the cafe and back into Willa's sights on her computer screen. 

"Black Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti 2017, four door, silver rims, license number 9 Quebec Alfa Golf 1 6 Kilo." Willa spoke clearly into the mic. "On eleven-o-clock, Rapp." She watched his head turn sharply to the left, in front of him, and he began walking fast towards the black Italian luxury car. 

" _Do you have eyes on Ghost?_ " Stan asked.

"No, Sir."

" _Then mission terminated._ " 

Mitch hesitated for a moment, watching the car that one of the target's was in drive away. Willa knew he was about to do something impulsive; she had seen that look before. Mitch caught the valet from a restaurant across the Square pull up in a slate gray 2016 4C Coupe by Alfa Romeo, and he hopped in as the valet stepped out. He shifted the car into a higher gear and took off after Sharif. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing against Annika, and I'm sure I'll love her in the film, but for my purposes, I did not need her presence. Sorry (I'm not sorry).


	27. Day 104 (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch goes after Hamdi Sharif, only to find himself walking into Sharif's heavily defended hotel room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> watch me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW0PrPgI8F8

"He just took off after Sharif, Sir." Aiden updated Stan, coming off as a little more frantic sounding to his superior than he had hoped. 

"Where is he, Willa. I'm driving blind here." Mitch spoke through Aiden's computer speakers and Willa's earpiece.

" _CUT HIM OFF, BREEN_." Stan screamed through the speaker on Aiden's computer. Aiden glanced at Willa, who had paused from typing on her laptop, trying to pinpoint Sharif's exact location to give Mitch directions. 

"Willa.. come on, I'm gonna lose him." Mitch begged. 

" _CUT HIM OFF!_ " Stan yelled again, done with Mitch's insubordination. 

Aiden hit a short sequence of keys on his computer and suddenly Mitch's earpiece was cut off. "ARE YOU INSANE?" Willa screamed at Aiden, who looked guilty for his action and surprised by her rage. "Jesus fuck!" Willa, ripped her earpiece out, pulled her burner phone from her jacket pocket and dialed Mitch's number. She quickly reached in her bag to grab her headphones with the mouthpiece attached to talk to him handsfree. "Mitch?"

"Are you the only one that can hear me, Will?" Mitch asked, the sound of his powerful engine revving in the background. 

"Yea, I'm working on getting you his location. I'm almost there. Give me twenty more seconds." She typed furiously on her computer, scanning the street cameras she was hacking into for any trace of the car. "I've got him." She pulled up the city infrastructure map. "Turn right in 700 yards."

" _Is she helping him?_ " Stan yelled through Aiden's speakers. " _Stop her! What the fuck is going on? Have you lost your mind, Willa?_ "

Aiden reached for her laptop, and Willa reached for her gun and swung it around in Aiden's direction. She pointed it down towards the floor of the car, not wanting to directly aim it at her friend and instructor. "Either you help me, or you get out of the car." She gave Aiden the ultimatum. 

Aiden tilted his head to the side and moved in a way that displeased Willa, so she finally raised her gun up to his face, inches away from his forehead. "Willa..." Aiden whispered, stunned by her actions. 

"I made the right, Will, where do I go now?" Mitch spoke into her ear. 

"Get out, Aiden. Now." Aiden did as he was told and slowly exited the car. Willa glanced at her computer screen and spoke to Mitch as she reached across the length of the backseat to shut the door. "Your next left, take it."

"The alley?"

"The alley." She confirmed. "I'm coming to back you up." She said, once Aiden stood a safe distance away. She hopped in the driver's seat, turned the keys in the ignition, grabbed the laptop from the back, and placed it on the passenger's seat. She peeled out of Sultanahmet Square, now completely deserted because of the shooting. She passed a flurry of police cars heading in the direction that she was driving away from, and she sped erratically towards Mitch. 

"Do you still have him, W? Where am I going once I get out of this long ass alley?" 

"Yea, I have him. The alley, it's a short-cut, you're going to make your first left, then your third left, and first right and you'll be on his tail." She heard the engine revving again in the background, and she followed her own directions to catch up with him. She breathed heavily through her nose, her thoughts clouding her ability to multi-task now that it was suddenly quiet and her adrenaline began to return to a normal level. "Are you okay, Mitch?" She forgot that she was no longer on a secure line and that Aiden or Stan could easily tap their call if they wanted to.

"I'm okay, W. I didn't get hit."

"Okay..."

"You weren't even in the same room as me and you still had me. You always got my back, Will." 

She exhaled at his words, a small smile settling on her lips. "Always." She whispered.

"I see him. I'm slowing down. He doesn't know this car. I'm gonna follow him. Peel off, Will. When he settles down and stops driving, come after me. I don't want him getting suspicious of two cars following him." Mitch made a valid request. 

"Okay, I'm gonna hang up so that Aiden can't track you. Call me as soon as he parks." 

"I will."

"Mitch.." If she could, if they had been saying it, her next words would have been ' _I love you_.'

"I know, Will." And Mitch did know that she loved him. 

* * *

 Willa's phone rang once, and she immediately picked up when she saw the number. She waited, silently, for him to speak first. "He parked."

"I saw."

"You still got us on your computer?" Mitch asked through the speaker. 

"Yea. I've been following you for an hour. Wait for me, M. I'm coming to back you up." Willa said, as she started the engine of her car again. 

"I don't wanna let him get away. I'm going up there, Will. I saw him in the window of one of the rooms on the top floor."

"What are you going to do? Just waltz through the front door?" Willa said, her accelerating engine making her speak loudly. 

"I was thinking about the back door." Mitch said, eyeing a sliding glass door high up on the building. 

"I guess I've got the front covered then." 

"When you get here, tell Stan where we are, W."

"I know. I will. Although, I'd be surprised if he doesn't already know."

"I'll see you in a little. Be careful."

"You too." Willa glanced down at her phone. The line was dead. She shoved it in her jacket pocket and sped off in his direction. 

Mitch got out of the car, parked behind the building that Hamdi Sharif had entered no more than five minutes before. He began climbing on the hood of the car closest to the green wrought iron fence that bordered the back of the building. He carefully scaled the tall fence, skillfully avoiding the tangles of barbed wire at the top. He glanced up at the building and plotted his course; Sharif was on the seventh floor. Mitch thought back to the rock climbing he had done recently in Kentucky and how he kept thinking that he could've done all of it without ropes. He snickered silently to himself; he was about to get a chance to test that theory.

Mitch slowly and carefully scaled the side of the modern-style building, using window ledges, balconies and structural embellishments to to get higher and higher up. He made it to the seventh floor with relative ease, smirking to himself that he would get to brag to Willa later that the tread on the bottom of his Adidas helped to keep him from falling. Movement caught his eye from inside of the apartment, and Mitch spotted a woman in a loose silk bathrobe staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window that he wanted to enter through. He stood, his back against the cement facade, trying to remain unseen, and watched her walk away. He quietly popped the window open and slid through, watching her walk down the hall away from him. 

He knew this wasn't his best idea. He was going in to the hotel room blind; no idea of how many men Sharif had guarding him and where any of them were. The only certainty he had was that Sharif was the kind of man that brought an army along with him everywhere he went, and that he would more than likely supply them with an armory to match. 

Mitch peeked around the corner, into the room where the barely clothed woman had just walked through. He watched her close the door behind her in what he assumed was the bedroom portion of the very large suite they were in. Mitch counted five men with guns and knives, relaxing on the sofas in the living area, not being vigilant enough to catch on to his intrusion. He clocked two more, with semi-automatic weaponry strapped around their necks, resting in their hands ready to shoot, guarding the bedroom door. That was clearly where Mitch had to get into. 

" _SEN_!" A man shouted in modern Turkish.

Mitch turned and saw a man approach him with a gun, a commotion began in the other room. Mitch was clearly not incognito any longer. The man pointed his gun at Mitch, and Mitch pretended to put his hands above his head, but quickly elbowed the man in the face and disarmed him, then using the man's own gun, Mitch shot him in the knee. The man went down and Mitch was bombarded by a throng of new combatants.

Mitch shot another and then threw the gun to the side when it jammed. He was more efficient than a shoddily made firearm anyway. He flipped the first man to come at him with a knife down to the ground and began punching him ferociously across the jaw, blood spraying across the carpet. He looked up just in time to see the butt of a handgun come across his face.

Mitch came to moments later, picking his hand up to the outside of his right browbone and feeling warm blood dribble down his fingers.

"On your knees, hands behind your head." Ghost said bluntly. 

Mitch did as he was told, folded his hands neatly behind his head, and stared up at Ghost. Mitch felt that his gun had been taken from the back of his jeans, and he began running through the different scenarios he could play out to get himself out of the situation he put himself in. Ghost interrupted his internal game plan when he spoke again. 

"You were the one in the cafe. Who are you?" Mitch stared back at him, defiantly quiet. "Why are you following me? You in the CIA?" Ghost leaned down and kept his face in front of Mitch's, trying to intimidate him into answering his line of questioning. Mitch stared back, his lips pressed gently against each other, and he just blinked until Ghost grew tired of waiting. "He's not going to say anything, and it doesn't really matter who he is anyway." 

Ghost turned around and picked up the metal briefcase that he left on an end table in the living room. He began heading for the door, when one of the Turkish men, with his gun drawn towards Mitch's figure, spoke up. 

"What are we supposed to do with him?" The henchman asked. 

"Kill him." Ghost replied as he left the hotel room, with two of his men in tow. 

* * *

 Willa pulled up and parked on the street in front of the hotel. She closed the laptop on the passenger seat and sent a text to Stan's phone with the location. She grabbed an extra magazine of ammunition from her satchel on the floor of the backseat and stuck it in her jacket pocket. She left the car unlocked and briskly walked towards the main entrance. A group of five men, clearly packing weapons from the way that they walked, walked in before her and got on the first of three elevators on the ground floor. The middle elevator was coming down and the third elevator finally opened its doors for Willa. She waited, watching where the group of men were going. The first elevator stopped on the seventh floor. They were backup to kill Mitch. 

" _Shit_." She sprinted into the third elevator and hit the '7' button several times until the doors closed. 

* * *

 Mitch had his game plan in mind and the henchman surrounding him played right into it. The man closest, pointing the gun at the back of Mitch's head, stepped forward and pressed the barrel against the backs of Mitch's fingers. Mitch knew he had to act.

Mitch turned abruptly, clapped his hands over the the hand holding the gun behind him, startling the man and grabbing his gun from him. The other henchman scattered into action. Mitch, rose to his feet, held the handgun in his right hand and swung his left fist back and up, making contact with the bridge of the man's nose and throwing him back against the wall. 

Another man charged at Mitch from behind, and without turning hardly at all, Mitch glanced behind him, and elbowed the charging man in the face hard. He went down without a second hit. 

Mitch finally cocked the gun, arming it, and shot off rapid fire shots. The first round went into the first man's head, right between his eyes. He laid splayed across the white rug on the floor, blood slowly pooling next to his neck. The second round took out the two men next to him. Mitch turned and shot off a fourth round into the man who he had elbowed earlier, at a close range, into his forehead. The fourth man's blood sprayed across Mitch's face and shirt, and stained the white rug underneath him further, showering the room in the red liquid. 

He didn't even hear the sounds of the men groaning or screaming in agony when they were shot or dying, and it wasn't because of the loud shots coming from the barrel of his gun, Mitch was just zoned in and on a mission and he became incredibly single-minded. The rest of the world faded to black. It was just him and the task at hand.

Mitch rotated on the balls of his feet, surveying his damage. The second man he had shot, was merely wounded and writhed in agony on the carpet. Mitch stood over him and pumped two more rounds into his face and chest. The man suddenly became still. 

The action on Mitch's gun indicated that his magazine was empty. Mitch tossed the useless weapon onto one of the bodies on the floor, and counted who was around him, while wiping away at the hair that clung to the sweat on his forehead. He smeared blood on his face and counted four. Four bodies. Someone was missing from earlier.

He glanced up and saw a fit but balding older man in a black-on-black well fitted suit, holding a fully automatic assault rifle in his hands, standing between Mitch and the bedroom that held Hamdi Sharif.

* * *

 Willa watched as the numbers slowly ascended and she grew closer to the seventh floor. The elevator made a dinging noise as it reached its intended destination and the silver doors began to open. The elevator next to hers made the same dinging sound and Willa watched as three men stepped on and the doors closed behind them. She peeked her head out, her Glock readied in her hands but pointed at the white carpet beneath her, and she counted five men rounding the corner in the hall towards the suite at the end. Willa tip-toed behind them, surveying the hall for better cover; there was not much. The doors to the other suites were barely indented into the wall, but Willa would have to make do. 

She waited to confirm that the group was heading to Sharif's hotel room and when it was the only door left at the end of the hall, she aimed her gun at the neck of the furthest man. For a split moment, Dan Brunski's face appeared in Willa's mind. She hesitated, and then heard gun fire, and finally took action. Aim, exhale, pull. 

The farthest man's body hit the floor, like a heavy sack of potatoes being carelessly tossed to the ground. The sound of the man gurgling and choking on his own blood began to fill the room. The other men scrambled and began firing back at her. She peeked out quickly, dodging heavy fire, and took down two more men. Aim, exhale, pull. Aim, exhale, pull. The first man writhed in pain on the ground, grasping his thigh and trying to keep from bleeding out, while the other man collapsed to the ground - an instant kill shot. 

Willa pushed her body as hard against the indented door as she could, trying to flatten herself out in order to not get hit, and when she heard one of their clips hitch, indicating it needed to be reloaded, she peeked out into the hall. Neither man was to be found. Willa heard movement up ahead and suddenly saw one of the henchmen pop out from behind a decorative pillar in the wall, the other man behind him, and he began firing at Willa. One bullet grazed the side of her arm and Willa sunk back against the door again. She pushed her fingers against her arm, blood dripping off of her fingers as she looked down at them. She had been counting bullets. One of them was going to have to reload again in a moment if they kept up the assault that they were currently trying for. Willa heard the last bullet casing drop, and popped out from behind the doorframe again, regardless of the other man still firing. It was kill or be killed. She trained her gun on the one still firing and pumped two rounds into his chest. She had been hit a little more seriously in the left arm this time, but the adrenaline was coursing through her veins and she had one target left between her and Mitch. 

He frantically fumbled with reloading his semi-automatic assault rifle, but it was all in vein. Willa walked up to him, ducked out of the way of him trying to smash her across the face with the butt of his weapon, and she emptied three more rounds into the man's forehead. He dropped to the ground with a thud. Willa walked back to the man who she had shot in the thigh and emptied her mag into the man's body, well after he finally stopped moving. She shoved her gun into her left hand, and reached into her right side jacket pocket, grabbing the loaded cartridge out, dropping the empty mag on the blood soaked carpet, and painfully slamming the new ammo into place in her gun. She turned and headed towards the door of Sharif's room. 

* * *

Mitch and the man in the black suit holding a Russian AK-74M black assault rifle stared at each other, both still, for a prolonged moment. They were never destined for just a staredown, however. 

The henchman in black lurched into action and aimed his firearm at Mitch, who ducked out of the way and behind the bar. Broken glass and wooden shards began flying around Mitch's head, and he covered his face with his arms. The shoddily made Soviet-era weapon jammed and the man in black attempted to unblock his firearm. Mitch took the opportunity. He climbed up onto the bar, leapt off of it, and knocked into the man. They tumbled together over one of the olive green sofas in the living room, and fell into the glass-topped coffee table, shattering it into a million tiny pieces below them. 

Mitch was so jacked with adrenaline that he didn't feel a single iota of pain. He wrapped his thighs around the man's head and neck, hyperextending his enemy's shoulder backwards and pulling at the rifle until it finally was free of his grip. Mitch lost his hold and the gun flew backwards towards the side of the couch and away from the two men. Mitch got up onto his knees, the crunching of glass under his hand and blue denim jeans echoed loudly in his ears but he didn't have time to care, as he watched as the man pulled a small silver dagger from his inside jacket pocket.

The man in black blocked one of Mitch's first attempts to disarm him, and tried to plunge the knife into Mitch's armpit. This was a move he recognized immediately. This was a worthy opponent for Mitch. This man was more than just a hired mercenary, he was a trained killer himself. Mitch had been taught by Stan how to slip a knife through a person's armpit and pop their heart like it was a carnival balloon; so when the man tried to do it to him, Mitch was also prepared with the move to stop it. 

Mitch moved towards the man in black, allowing the knife to miss and leave a shallow slice across his shoulder blade instead; a fair trade off in Mitch's eyes. Mitch moved his arm on top of his opponent's forearm, locking him against Mitch's body, and he pulled, while delivering a quick right hook to the man's jaw. The knife dropped to the ground next to Mitch's leg. 

Mitch got up and went for the gun lying on the ground, but when he turned around, the man had produced two more knives. Mitch dropped the gun to the ground again as he saw the man lunge at him, the knife coming down from above his head with strong momentum. Mitch grabbed the man's forearm with both of his hands, defending his person from being stabbed, but he got slashed on his right side, just below his ribs, with the second knife. 

Mitch managed to pry the first knife out of his fighting partner's hand, and he lunged out of the way of another stabbing attempt, instead, getting to the side of the man in black, and stabbing him in the arm. The man cried out in pain but continued the fight to the death, a fact that both of them fully understood. It was always kill or be killed in this business. The man went for one more attempt at stabbing Mitch. He tried to push the dagger deep into Mitch's throat, if successful, a move that would've made Mitch's last moments full of unbearable suffering. 

Mitch slid to the right, putting his body parallel to the knife, and he grabbed the man's arm. Mitch had the perfect grip, his left hand just above the man's wrist, and his right hand on his elbow. Mitch simultaneously pulled backwards on his wrist and pushed forward on his elbow, all while yanking at his shoulder. Mitch heard several cracks and pops and the man screamed in anguish. Mitch had, all at once, broken the man in black's elbow, dislocated his shoulder completely, and forced him down on to his knees. 

Mitch smiled when he saw the man turn, not willing to go down like that. He appreciated those who mirrored his relentless nature. The man picked up a large shard of glass from the floor next to him, blood gushing from his fleshy palm as he gripped the jagged edges, and he attempted to stab Mitch one final time. Mitch grabbed the man's hand and pushed the shard back into his opponent's chest. The man fell to the floor and began to bleed out. 

Mitch turned when he heard the front door. He lurched for the assault rifle on the floor, but stopped when he saw Willa enter the front door to the suite, clearing the room with her gun trained up, ready to fire at a moment's notice. 

"You okay, M?" She asked as she checked the corners of the large hotel apartment, making sure that there were no living stragglers besides who was hiding in the bedroom. 

Mitch dropped the AK-74 to the ground, and approached one of the lifeless henchman, laying in a pool of his own blood. He pulled the Beretta 9mm from his holster and checked the magazine, finding it completely full. Mitch looked up at Willa and clocked the blood dripping from her wounded left arm. "I'm okay. Are you?" He nodded to her gunshot wound, and she nodded back.

"Sharif?" As Willa asked about if Hamdi Sharif had been eliminated or not, the man in black, who had quietly crawled behind the couch to grab the gun that Mitch had left on the floor, had stood up behind the couch, unjammed the gun and was prepared to kill the two assassins. Willa saw it happening and empty seven consecutive shots into the man's person, causing him to fall backwards with such force that he broke the large glass window behind him, and fell out of the apartment building and down seven stories to his final death.

Mitch glanced over at Willa, and smirked. She was the quickest shot he'd ever seen, and she rarely, if ever, missed. He truly owed her his life in that moment. "Sharif is about to be taken care of." Mitch finally answered her question and approached the door to the bedroom. 

Willa followed him, her Glock drawn to the ground, only gripped by her right hand, as her left hand was too slippery from the blood dripping down her fingers. Mitch kicked open the wooden door and saw the man who had supplied the weapon that killed Katrina cowering on the foot of his bed, unarmed and helpless. The woman in the closet startled Willa, who entered after Mitch, and Willa shot her, a clean entry and exit, straight through her heart. She dropped the ground, and Sharif whimpered. 

"Where's the plutonium?" Willa demanded to know.

"I sold it. It's gone. He took it." Sharif offered up quickly. 

Willa glanced at Mitch and shook her head. Mitch understood. He stepped forward, trained his gun on Sharif's forehead, waited for a half a second to savor the fear in his eyes, and then pulled the trigger twice. Sharif dropped backwards onto the bed, the life already gone from his body.


	28. Day 105

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day after Mitch assassinates the arms dealer, Hamdi Sharif, but neglects to capture Ghost or the stolen plutonium, Stan assigns Mitch and Willa with a new mission in a famous Turkish landmark.

_Willa walked into the bathroom with the first aid kit, placed it on the counter, and closed the door behind her. Mitch had taken his cut up and bloody shirt off and thrown it on the tile floor. Blood dripped from his right ribcage and his right eyebrow, and Willa covered her mouth with her hand at the sight._

_"I'm okay, Will." Mitch whispered. Willa bit her bottom lip, trying to physically choke back the tears from coming, and she nodded. She didn't know who she was trying to convince more that she believed he was okay, and in turn, she was okay. "Willa..." She couldn't even look at him, dried blood, that wasn't his, and small bruises and cuts on his forearms and knuckles littered his body and upset her even more. The tears began to flow freely, and she turned away. She faced the bathroom door, covered her eyes with her hand, and began crying. "Willa..." Mitch placed his hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him, not realizing that him crinkling his forehead was making his eyebrow bleed more, and blood was dripping down his cheek. Willa looked up, through blurry eyes, saw the blood, and lost it. She sunk against the door and onto the floor, shoved her face into her hands and sobbed. "Wilhelmina Grace Hurley." Mitch said, as he sat on the ground in front of her, his long legs extended on either side of her, and his hands pulling hers away from her face gently. _Mitch had dug out the slug that was buried in her arm, and patched her up as soon as they got back to the safe house. Stan had sent her in to fix him up when he got on the phone with Irene._  _

_Willa looked up at him and spoke through sobs. "It's just, if you had died..."_

_"I know. I won't. I promise. They're just cuts. I know it's hard, but this is part of the job. I'm gonna get a little beaten up sometimes. We both will. We both did. But I'm okay.... We both are. Nothing bad happened to me... Will..." Mitch wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks, and smiled. "I'm okay. You're gonna clean me up and you'll see that I'm okay. Okay?"_

_Willa nodded and sniffled, and then fluttered her eyes, trying to keep further tears from coming out. Mitch frowned slightly, upset that she was upset still and just wanting her to not be crying. He leaned down and placed a soft and short kiss on her lips. Willa felt all her fear and anxiety and love take over her body. She reached out before Mitch could really pull away, hooking her left hand behind his neck and her right hand against his cheek, and she shoved her mouth against his in a hungry, desperate and passionate kiss. Mitch felt all of her emotion through her lips, and felt his body surging at her touch. She finally broke away and looked him deep in his soft brown eyes._

_"Next time, kill them all before they even lay a fucking hand on you."_

_Mitch smiled because Willa got him. She understood his job and she wasn't trying to change him. She just didn't want him to leave her. "I will. I promise."_

_With Willa's peace finally spoken, they got off the floor and she sowed up the gash on his side, and butterfly taped the cut on his eyebrow and they returned to the living room where Stan was debriefing Irene on what had happened that day._

* * *

 Mitch glanced down at the black and silver watch on his right wrist, the glass on the face was cracked, but he could still make out the hands: it was early in the morning. He yawned and glanced over at Willa. She was slumped over, with her arms crossed over her chest, and her head resting sideways on the arm of the couch they were both on back at the safehouse with Stan and Aiden. He smiled softly, glanced over at Aiden, who was fast asleep, and didn't see any signs of Stan walking back into the room. Mitch closed Willa's jacket tighter around her body, under her arms, and watched as she shifted into a more comfortable position. He snickered to himself at the difference a few hours had made in what he was doing in a hotel living room. 

Stan walked back into the room after being gone for over an hour and slammed the door behind him, jolting both Willa and Aiden from their resting positions. Stan glared over at Mitch as he walked between the couch that him and Willa sat on and the chair that Aiden was reclined in. "Well, Irene still wants you on the op, Rapp. If it were up to me though, I'd fucking hand you to Ghost." Stan seethed through his teeth. He turned to Aiden and the two walked over to Aiden's makeshift computer station on the table.  

"Rapp." Stan said loudly, approaching Mitch and Willa again, as Mitch rose from the couch to be eye level with his superior. 

"Yes, sir."

"What the fuck were you thinking? Who authorized you to make contact?" Stan questioned Mitch, his general dislike for the young man and his disregard for orders was apparent. 

"I took the initiative, sir." Mitch replied as if he had done nothing wrong, which a large part of him believed he had not. 

"You aren't trained to 'take initiative', Rapp! YOU ARE TRAINED TO FOLLOW COMMANDS!" Stan's voice echoed through the bare room. "You disobeyed a direct order!"

"No. I made a decision to pursue the target, and I completed the mission, and sir, isn't that what I'm here to do? Isn't that my job?" Mitch argued back in a calmer tone than Stan. 

Stan leaned over the table between him and Mitch and shoved his pointer finger against the wood grain emphatically, as he spoke, the blood rushing to his face, causing him to turn a bright shade of red. "Your job is to do what I tell you!" Mitch shook his head, causing Stan to become more irate. Mitch smirked slightly because of how much of a rise he managed to get out of Stan. "What the fuck are you smirking at, you little fucking puke?"

"Nothing, sir." Mitch straightened out his lips, wiping the grin off of his face in an effort to just end the heated exchange.

"You don't pull shit like that again. Do you understand, you son of a bitch?" 

Mitch gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, but yielded to his superior, not admitting any fault or wrongdoing, but agreeing that he understood that he was supposed to follow Stan's instruction. "Yes, sir."

Stan stared at Mitch for a few more seconds, and then glanced at Willa, remembering the part that she had played in the day's events. "And you, jesus fucking christ, you! Three years, three fucking years, Willa, and you have never pulled a stunt like that. A single fucking mission with this fucking shithead and you lose your god damn mind!" 

Mitch clenched his jaw, trying to keep from chewing Stan out for speaking to Willa like that, but Willa was not as tight-lipped. She stood next to Mitch and yelled back at Stan. "Lost my mind?! Mitch was the only one with the sense to follow the target and complete the mission, which he did! He eliminated Sharif."

"Why the hell did you have to go after _him,_ though?" Stan said gesturing towards Mitch, without even looking at him. Stan shook his head and narrowed his eyes at Willa. 

"He needed our help, sir, and you and Aiden were clearly not going to provide the necessary backup."

"Oh for fuck's sake, Willa." Stan threw his hands up in the air, exasperated with the way that she was looking out for Mitch. Stan began rolling his eyes at his niece. "Just because he saved you from bein-" Stan paused in the middle of his sentence, realizing what he was about to say was truly crossing a line.

A look of disgust was cast over Willa's face and she arched her eyebrows. "Just because he what... finish your fucking sentence." Willa said through clenched teeth, and Mitch took a small step forward, uncertain of what was about to transpire, but uncomfortable with the possibilities.

Stan shook his head and stared at his shoes. "No."

"Just because he saved me from getting raped and executed, I don't have to... what? Feel loyal to him? I do, because he did, and don't you dare ever throw that shit back in my-" 

Stan cut her off. "Don't make demands to me. You're forgetting your fucking place here, Willa." 

Willa was exasperated with Stan, and she made an error. "You know what, _Stan_?" Mitch and Aiden glanced at Willa with a stunned look on both of their faces over the fact that she had slipped up and called Stan by anything other than ' _sir_ ' or ' _Agent_ _Hurley_ '. She continued her tirade. "You may not want me out there, and you may not think that I can handle it, but Mitch had-" She paused, walked over to the table, grabbed the Beretta that Mitch had shot most of the men with, and pulled out the magazine, before forcefully throwing it at Stan, who caught it. "He had two fucking bullets left, and while he probably would have figured something out, he also very well could have died if I hadn't provided him with backup... if I hadn't eliminated the threats before they reached him... I'm not sorry, _sir_." She emphasized the word 'sir' a little too long and a little too facetiously, and it made Stan's blood pressure rise. "I'm not here to leave Mitch behind, or anyone else for that matter. I'm here to help complete the fucking mission."

Stan didn't want to get into it further with his niece at that moment, and he was frankly a little stunned into submission by her aggression. He lowered his head and wagged his finger in the air towards her face. "Don't ever fucking disobey my orders ever again, do you understand, _Agent_?"

Willa glared at Stan but relented. "Yes, sir." Willa suddenly mimicked Mitch’s usual indignation while repeating those two words to Stan.

"I got a hit through facial rec." Aiden interrupted the tense and unusual back and forth happening in the living area of the small hotel room, and everyone gathered around his computer. "He's in the Grand Bazaar."

* * *

 Willa and Mitch split up and walked down different ends of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. They were surrounded by colorful swatches of fabric, pungent smelling spices and delicate pieces of glassware and pottery that the vibrant and boisterous merchants were selling at different booths. The crowd was thick but Willa determined that spotting another American would not be that difficult, even if he did not look anything like the picture that was supplied to them in the briefing packets on the plane anymore. 

Mitch was looking for Ghost, but he was also tailing Stan, curious as to what his reluctant mentor was doing in the marketplace. Was he looking for Ghost also or was he serving his own interests? Mitch wasn't sure, and he was still curious what it was that Stan was doing the day before when he and Annika were surveilling Hamdi Sharif. 

Mitch weaved through the crowd, ducking into vendor's stalls and then declining a purchase gracefully before continuing on his pursuit. Willa had butterfly taped his eyebrow closed before they left, but Mitch felt as though the white bandage made him stick out, so shortly after splitting from her, he ripped it off and threw it away. He wore his still torn and cut up black, long-sleeved thermal shirt, and the same blue jeans and white and green Adidas from the night before, but had swapped his jacket out for a lightweight black suede coat, with a small leather collar that protected his neck and hid the tears in the fabric of his shirt.

Mitch found a good vantage point in the second story of a building that did not have a door to lock. He watched Stan pause to pretend to look at some cloth, but really get his bearings. Mitch's eye was drawn to a tall and built figure who seemed to be mimicking Stan's actions, because once Stan felt like he knew what and who was around him, he continued walking through the marketplace, and so did the shadowy figure. Mitch came back down to ground level and began tailing the duo; he was certain it was Ghost. 

"I see you, Stan. At your eleven." Mitch heard Willa say into his earpiece, and he scanned the crowd until he clocked her. 

"Any sign of the target?" Stan asked.

"Negative." Willa reported back. 

"Aiden, do you have eyes on Rapp?" Stan asked. 

"I've got eyes on him, Sir." Willa said, and approached Mitch, walking past both Stan and the shadowy figure. 

Mitch watched the shadowy figure tense up, as he watched Willa approach and walk past, and Mitch's instincts told him that something wasn't right. He pulled Willa behind him by the wrist, and made eye contact with the mystery man. It was Ghost, with the color completely washed from his face, like he, himself, had seen a specter from his past. 

Ghost saw Mitch glance at Stan, and then back at him. "Fuck. I've got Ghost on my two-o-clock." Mitch finally spoke up. Stan saw Mitch begin to pursue Ghost, a crouching position through the crowd with his gun stuffed in his jacket pocket. Ghost saw his window closing, clocked Hurley in the crowd, fired off three rounds, and then fled into the panic stricken mob that formed and surged through the famous Turkish landmark. 

Mitch and Willa lost Ghost and rushed to Stan's side, who was laying on the marketplace floor, ripping at his blue button down shirt and black vest, only to reveal that all three shots had gone into the kevlar vest that Stan was wearing under his clothes. Stan looked up at the two new operatives and spoke hoarsely, as if the shots had taken the breath out of him. "We need to get out of here before the Jandarma shows up." He ordered them to help him up and out of the Grand Bazaar before the Turkish state police got to the scene of the crime and asked more questions than Stan was comfortable answering. 

They ducked into an alleyway and avoided a run-in with the Jandarma. They stood in the close quarters of the covered alley for several minutes in silence, until the frustration inside of Mitch finally bubbled to the surface. "What the fuck was that?"

"Watch yourself, Rapp." Stan warned.

Mitch stepped up closer to Stan, invading his personal space on purpose. "No, I fucking watched that whole thing. He was tailing you. You're not telling us the whole story." Willa narrowed her eyes at Stan over Mitch's accusations. She, too, had felt as though there was something she did not know about this mission. "Why's this guy after you? Something personal, sir?" Mitch taunted Stan, inches from his face, not caring that he could see the rage over his insubordinate talk building behind Stan's eyes. 

Mitch was saved from further confrontation by the sound of Aiden's voice through all three of their earpieces. Irene wanted them all back to the safehouse, they were to get ready to leave Turkey.

* * *

 "So where are we going?" Willa asked as they all settled into the seats on the private jet that they had flown in on.  

"Irene gave us a lead on Rome. The NSA has tracked chatter there about Ghost and missing plutonium." Stan told them the truth for once. "Willa, you're the new second on this. You and Mitch are a team, per Irene's instructions." He was less than pleased to report the new development. 

Mitch waited until the flight was in the air and en route before he continued his line of questioning from the alleyway. He was not done with Stan yet. "Sir..." Stan glanced up at Mitch from across the small table that separated the four seater that he, Willa and Mitch were sitting in. Aiden was in a two seater across the aisle plugged into his computer. "Who was that guy, in Istanbul. It seemed like he was a step ahead of us every time, and he was tracking you."

Willa glanced to her right to look at Mitch, who was solely focused on Stan, and then glanced across the table at Stan, who's head was tilted down, his eyes staring at his hands. "Many years ago, after the attacks on September 11th, I was tasked with creating a black ops group that was not a part of The Agency, but worked in conjunction with it's wishes. A team of special assets for the interests and safety of the American people."

"Orion." Mitch named the group that he had just become a part of. 

Stan nodded. "Ghost was Orion. I trained him for many years at The Barn...." Stan took a long pause and shook his head. "Everything he did in Istanbul, I taught him how to do."

"He's ex-CIA, then?" Willa asked. 

Stan shook his head. "Worse, he's ex-Orion. He, himself, is a super-weapon, and he is very unstable. He needs to be stopped before he sets off the next World War with these nukes."

"So then that's what we'll do, sir." Mitch replied.

 Stan sighed loudly and got up from his seat to move over to the couch against the wall to sleep. Willa called out after him, and he turned around. “Wait, Sir, if I’m second, are we not getting another native speaker to help us while we’re in Italy?”

Stan raised his eyebrows and smirked. “I almost forgot I picked you up something before we left.” Stan reached down into his backpack and pulled a small paperback book out, he tossed it on the table in front of Mitch and Willa and smiled. “You speak French, how hard can it be?”

Mitch scrunched his face up in surprise. “Are you seriously asking Willa to become fluent in Italian before we land in Rome?” Mitch didn't understand that this was common practice with CIA agents. Sometimes they were given a few months notice to learn a language, sometimes a few weeks, and on the rare occasion, mere hours. 

Stan glanced at his watch, and then looked up at Mitch. “We’ve got two and a half hours before we land. Should be plenty of time.” Stan walked over to the couch, pulled his baseball cap over his face and drifted off to sleep.

Willa flipped through the book, seemingly looking for a particular word, her finger grazing the columns on the page and then stopping when she found what she wanted. She looked up at Mitch and pursed her lips before speaking. “Cazzo.”

Mitch smirked at how easily she fell into an Italian accent. “What does that mean?”

“Fuck.” She smirked and he laughed, rubbing his hand against her thigh.


	29. Day 106 (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the team's first day in Rome, Ghost abducts Stan and sets the two young agents on a path that they cannot turn back from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for waterboarding and other torture techniques and like cursing and male on female violence and an execution and yea. a lot happens in this chapter.

"What is it you think we do here?"

"Kill people who need to be killed."

"Exactly. At least you get that part of the job." 

"Play nice, boys. We were all getting along so well for a minute there." Willa said dryly through their earpieces. Mitch looked across Piazza Navona to where Willa sat on the opposite side of the fountain, lazily eating gelato and people watching, trying to blend in with the tourists while actually keeping her eyes peeled for Ghost. "Wait, wait.... I think... Yea, no, I have eyes on Ghost. He's heading towards the two of you."

"I'm pursuing, Mitch, cover my six." Stan said as he stood, took one last sip from his coffee and then walked away from the table and his young protégé.

Mitch glanced to his right, and saw Willa heading towards a trashcan to toss her iced treat and follow Stan and Mitch. He got up from his metal chair and heard the legs scrape against the cobblestone underneath as he pushed it backwards. Mitch began to leisurely tail Stan, glancing around up at the buildings above. Any other tourist that saw Mitch would simply assume he was admiring the ancient architecture, but Mitch was actually checking for snipers and surveillance.

“Anything?” Willa said into Mitch’s ear, as she casually glanced over at him from across the piazza. Mitch subtley shook his head, and looked ahead at Stan.

“Fall back, kid. You’re getting too eager.” Stan mumbled into his mouthpiece.

Mitch rolled his eyes, but did as he was directed. He fell back and acted as if he was particularly interested in the plaque that Willa was pretending to read at the edge of the square. Willa watched as Stan weaved his way through the crowds of tourists to pursue the man wearing a beanie and a high collared jacket that Willa had positively assumed was Ghost. 

"Hurley, I'm losing a visual on you.. Mitch and I are pursuing." Willa said with a not-so-subtle amount of concern in her voice. 

Mitch turned to Willa, and covered his microphone so that Aiden and Stan couldn't hear him. "W, go get the car.." Willa contorted her face into a bewildered frown. "Will... please." 

Willa rolled her eyes, huffed, and broke off. "Keep me updated on your locations. I'm bringing the car around to follow." She took off on a hard jog back to the other side of the square where the black Maserati that they had been provided with sat.

"He's getting sloppy, Rapp, keep hanging back. I've got him." Stan directed. 

Mitch's instincts were telling him to catch up though. Something was not right about all of this. If Ghost were trained anything like Mitch and Willa, he would know that he was being tailed and he would have had dozens of opportunities to shake them in the busy and narrow streets outside of Piazza Navona.

"Stan, what's your twenty? I've lost visual." Aiden requested through all of their earpieces. "Hurley?" Aiden repeated himself. "Rapp, do you have a visual on Agent Hurley?"

"Negative. I've lost him...." Mitch began bobbing and weaving through the crowd. "Do you have a visual on Ghost, Breen?"

"Negative. I've lost them both." Aiden answered, frantically.

"Play back the footage, Aiden. Find him!" Willa demanded, pulling the car around on the outskirts of the popular Italian tourist destination. 

"I found his earpiece.. He's gone." Mitch reported, picking Stan's earpiece up from the dirty cobblestone streets. He rolled the tan and sticky, ear-wax covered listening device in his fingers and then finally shoved it in his jeans pocket. "Come on, anything, Breen?"

"I GOT HIM. I got him! Ghost snatched him into the alley fifteen yard behind you on your right." Aiden said, both excited and upset.

Mitch began running back to the alley where Stan had gotten snatched, but paused when he heard people screaming and cursing in Italian and other Romance languages. Then he heard an engine revving, and suddenly, Willa appeared, parting the crowds like the Red Sea in biblical times. 

Mitch hopped in the passenger seat, gripping the handle above the door, as Willa tore down the alley. "Of course Ghost was getting sloppy, it was a fucking trap. I should've known. I should've saw it coming." Mitch lamented, clenching his teeth over his disappointment in himself. 

"I've got footage. I think he stuck him with something, cause I have Ghost stuffing Stan into the trunk of a silver Benz, and he is not fighting back." Aiden revealed.

"Where, Breen? I'm running out of alley here." Willa shifted into the next gear as the alley narrowed.

"Take the left. Two blocks, then a right. He's not that far ahead."

Willa pressed her foot down on the gas pedal further, hearing the sound of ancient brick scraping metal as sparks flew off of her side mirrors. The alley had narrowed too much and taken both of her mirrors off. Willa didn't need them anyway. Stan had taught her offensive and tactical driving before he taught her how to parallel park. 

"I'm on him, I'm on him." Willa sped up further and Mitch decided to put his seatbelt on. He swayed with the movement of the car, simply a bystander in the high speed chase for Stan.

"Who the fuck is this guy and why'd he take Stan? Am I the only one who still feels like there is something that Stan isn't telling us?" Mitch was angry. He didn't like feeling like he was behind the curve and he didn't like it when someone got the jump on him. No one answered his question. 

"Holy shit, I'm watching the footage back. There was a woman following you and Stan, Mitch."

"Did she get in the car with Ghost?" Mitch inquired.

"Negative."

"Where is she now, Aiden?" Willa asked, leaning to her right and turning the wheel to make a sharp turn to continue following Ghost, who had popped up on the sidewalk of a busy Roman street, clipping a few pedestrians in the process.

"Heading back to Piazza Navona."

"Collect her, Breen."

"I'm already on it." Aiden replied to Mitch.

"WHERE THE FUCK DID HE JUST GO?!" Willa shouted, slowing her speed down. "FUCK." Willa slowed to an abrupt stop and slammed her hands against the steering wheel. Regardless of her perfect tactical driving, Ghost had managed to lose her. She was beginning to understand how he received his nickname. 

"It wasn't you. I lost him too, W. We gotta get out of here though." Mitch glanced over at Willa, hearing the police sirens wailing in the distance. Willa rolled her head back and forth on her neck. She was angry.

"Were coming back for you, Aiden." She said as she threw the car back into drive and raced off back towards Piazza Navona to pick up the agent and hopefully a hostage.

* * *

Willa stood outside of the door, her arms folded across her chest and a scowl resting on her lips, and she watched as Mitch cornered the woman, who had been following him earlier, against the white tiled wall. She was a beautiful American woman with long brown hair and a southern drawl, and Willa wondered what it would take to break her and start getting some answers. Mitch and Aiden had already roughed her up in the living room earlier in the evening, but it yielded no results. Willa stepped over to the bathtub in the bathroom and turned off the running faucets. The room suddenly became quiet besides the sound of Mitch and the woman breathing heavily. 

"We don't have to do this. Just answer my questions." Mitch snarled at the woman. He was standing in front of her, shirtless. His muscles rippled down his arms and back as he leaned his arms against the wall on either of side of her. 

The woman, rubbed the back of her hand against the blood dripping down her chin from her split lip, and then she spat on the ground next to Mitch's feet. Mitch was done playing nice. He slammed his right hand against the wall, next to her ear, and screamed nonsensically inches from her face. She recoiled, turning to her right, to see Willa staring coldly back, her left hand resting on the Glock on her hip-holster. 

"I once saw him break a porcelain sink with a man's face. Do you really want to have that be your fate?" A tinge of fear lit up the woman's eyes. "Just tell him."

"Just tell me." Mitch put his left hand gently around her throat, almost hovering. Allowing her to understand the threat of what was to come if she didn't start speaking. 

"Fuck you, CIA scum." The woman snarled back. 

Mitch's upper lip twitched up momentarily, and he could feel his blood pressure rising. He was done. It was time to kick things up a notch. Mitch wrapped his hands around the neck of the woman's shirt, spinning her around to the other side of the bathroom, and he slammed her against the wall above the bathtub. Small cracks began to form in the tile from the impact. She yelped out in agony as her head made harsh contact with the porcelain of the edge of the tub. Mitch then pushed her under the water. 

She fought back with her whole body against Mitch. She thrashed about in the water, spilling it on the floor and drenching Mitch. Mitch pulled her out from under the water, his hands still wrapped around her throat, staying just out of her reach as she tried to claw at his face. He submerged her again without asking any questions. She thrashed and thrashed and Mitch pulled her above a second time. 

"Where is Ghost?!" Mitch screamed in her face. She clawed at his arms, and spit in his face. Mitch dunked her under the surface once more. This went on for several more minutes; Mitch alway pulling her out just as her lungs began to give out. 

"I'm not telling you anything. Just drown me already!" The woman screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

Willa frowned. This was not going to work. "M." Mitch slammed the woman against the tile wall once more, too enraged to even hear Willa. "M!" Willa yelled, finally garnering Mitch's attention. "Take a break. Let me give it a go." Mitch nodded. "Agent Breen, can you get me one of the chairs and some duct tape?" 

Mitch placed the woman in the desk chair from the living room, securing her body against the chair and her hands against the adjustable arms. "What do you need from me?" Mitch asked Willa. 

"To go take a break. We're gonna talk. Just us girls." Willa smiled at the woman, who glared in response. Mitch began to walk out the door, before he turned around and leaned over to whisper in Willa's ear. 

"I'm right outside if you need me."

"I know." Willa flashed him a genuine and relaxed smile and reached into one of Stan's bags.

Mitch shut the door and glanced at his arm, it was bleeding from the deep claw marks she had left. Mitch walked over to his duffel by the bed and grabbed his other pair of jeans. He began to pull his black leather belt through the belt loops of his dry pair of pants when he heard the woman give out a blood curdling scream. Mitch noticed that he was the only one who ran to the door, as Aiden remained reclined on the sofa, picking through a plate of french fries. 

He decided if Aiden wasn't concerned that maybe Willa was just doing her job. "You okay, W?" Mitch asked through the bathroom door.

"Just talking about boys, M." Willa joked, and Mitch smirked. She was a little crazier than he knew, but then again, he was a little crazier than she knew. Mitch was not one to judge. 

* * *

Mitch paced the room. The screaming had ceased about ten minutes prior and Mitch was growing anxious. Finally the door opened, and Willa walked out, drying her hands off on a white bath towel. He noticed red marks on the plush towel when Willa threw it on the ground in the corner. 

"I need a secure line with the Director." She told Aiden, who got up and walked to his computer. 

"She talked?" Mitch asked, the surprise overly evident in his voice. 

"She fucking sung." Willa replied. 

"The Director." Aiden handed a hardwired phone to Willa, who remained standing in front of Mitch. 

Mitch glanced over her shoulder and saw the woman slumped over in the chair, blood dripping on the floor around her from her hands. "Director, Jennifer Blake. Yes, Ma'am, I know that.... We got her to talk. There is something going on here with Ghost and Agent Hurley, first of all. She said that he had been planning on abducting him and killing him from the moment he found out we landed in Rome. He lured us here." Willa paused and listened to Irene Kennedy on the other end of the line. "The real objective is that he has created more than one nuke. He's weaponized all of it and sent it off to various ports around the Mediterranean." Mitch raised his eyebrows in shock over what Willa had just told Kennedy. "Yes, Ma'am. Alexandria, Egypt, Athens, Greece, Barcelona, Spain, Beirut, Lebanon, Tel Aviv, Israel, Tripoli, Libya, and here, in Rome, as well." Willa looked up into Mitch's eyes with a tinge of fear. "Yes, Ma'am, she did. Aeroporto Internazionale Leonardo da Vinci." Mitch recognized the name. Willa gave the Italian name for RomeFiumicino Airport, one of the busiest airports in Europe, and he understood that Ghost wanted carnage and to make it a true international incident. "Less than twenty-four hours, Ma'am." Willa nodded. "No, Ma'am. He has many more trusted associates who he has sent off with the other bombs... Yes, Ma'am, if you secure us some assistance and transportation from the army, Rapp and I can take care of the nuke here and Ghost. He's still in the city, Ma'am. Yes, Ma'am.. Thank you."

Willa pulled the phone away from her ear and handed it to Mitch. "Yes, Ma'am. I understand." He watched as Willa turned around and walked back towards the bathroom. She wrapped her fingers around the base of her gun, and pulled it out of her holster. The woman weakly lifted her head at the sound of Willa's footsteps on the hard tile floor. No sooner than when she looked up, did Willa lift her Glock and pull the trigger. The woman tipped the chair backwards, and crashed against the wet ground. Willa holstered her weapon and watched as a pool of red liquid began to move across the floor next to the woman's head. "Yes, Ma'am." Mitch gulped. "Thank you." He handed the phone back to Aiden who listened to Irene speak.

"She was ex-CIA like Ghost. Irene and the Agency thought she was dead. She was part of Ghost's class." Willa gestured to the dead body in the bathroom.

"They didn't want us to bring her in?" Mitch asked.

Willa shook her head, and Mitch noticed her hands shaking. It was the first time she had killed someone without it being self-defense. She was frightened by how easy it was to do. "Stansfield wanted to tie up loose ends." She explained of the CIA Director, and Irene's boss. 

Mitch turned his body in between Aiden and Willa, blocking the view of her, regardless of the fact that Aiden had his back turned to them and was engulfed in his conversation with Irene. "You okay, Will? I could've done it, you know." He held her bloodied hands in his and gently rubbed his thumbs against her palms. 

Willa looked up at him and nodded unconvincingly. "I would've had to kill someone eventually." She spoke the truth and Mitch nodded.

* * *

Mitch and Willa sat next to each other on the Boeing CH-47 Chinook Italian military helicopter, as it flew them out to Fiumicino to look for Ghost's temporary lair. The woman who Willa had identified as Jennifer Blake, one of Ghost's most trusted associates, had not been sure whether or not Ghost had been planning on making it out of this ordeal alive. That fact made him all the more dangerous. If Ghost was on a suicide mission, and had nothing left to lose, he was an even greater threat than previously predicted. The Chinook touched down on the tarmac of Fiumicino and Mitch and Willa were ushered to a small black Maserati, the car that Willa had requested be waiting for them when they landed. 

Mitch hopped into the driver's seat and Willa directed him to the coordinates that they had received from Jennifer Blake, it brought them into an underground sewer tunnel that Mitch zipped through in the car. Willa fidgeted in her seat and rubbed at her wounded left arm; she had been enduring the pain and going on like she hadn't been shot less than forty-eight hours before. 

"You okay?" Mitch asked over the revving of the supercharged engine.

"Just worried about Stan and that we aren't going to be able to stop all of this." Willa replied, watching Mitch slow to turn down a wider tunnel. 

"We will, Will. I know we will, and Stan isn't new to this life. He's fine." Mitch couldn't be as soft and tender with her as he would want to be normally, mostly because he wasn't one-hundred percent confident that what he was telling her was true.

As Mitch drove through the tunnel and began seeing a growing light, he also began seeing figures get closer, blocking the way. He shifted into a higher gear and sped up. "They have guns." Willa announced the obvious.

"Get down." He pulled her across the center console and rested her head in his lap, then leaned to the left, towards the driver's side door, as the three henchmen sprayed the windshield of the Masertati with automatic-weapon firepower. The men backed up towards a locked metal gate blocking the way, and Mitch shifted into his highest gear. Two of the men stopped firing and began running back towards the gate, but the man in a blue and red, knockoff Adidas tracksuit, in the middle, continued his firing and Mitch pressed his foot to the floor of the car. The Maserati bounced as the man went under the front and then back tires. The man on the left of the car got torn in half by the grill of the car, also finding his way under the tires, and the man on the right got badly clipped by the mirror, splattering blood all over Willa's passenger side window. The car blew straight through the gate, leaving it mangled and destroyed in its wake.

Mitch let go of his grip on Willa's head and her eyes widened as she saw the cracks and webbing of the windshield from the barrage of bullets that he protected her from. "Slow.. slow, we're coming up." She pointed towards the white and fluorescent light up ahead.

Mitch came to a stop and pulled the M16 assault rifle off of the floor between Willa's feet. They knew they had to split up in order to find Ghost. Willa stared at him for a short moment as they stepped out of the car. 

"I'll see you topside. You got your phone?" Mitch asked her, gripping the deadly weapon in both of his capable hands. 

Willa nodded. She felt uneasy about splitting up. "Yea. You?" She knew she wasn't hiding it well.

"I do. It'll be fine, W. Just keep your eyes open." Mitch began walking backwards towards the tunnel behind him. 

"You too, M." 

* * *

Mitch got topside quicker than he expected, realizing that his tunnel did not lead to the lair, but instead led away from it and back outside. He glanced around, surveying his surroundings and allowing his eyes to readjust to the harsh afternoon sun. He smelled saltwater in the air around him and then heard the sputtering of an engine and the smell of saltwater being replaced by fumes of gasoline and exhaust. 

Mitch began running towards the direction of the sound, and finally caught sight of Ghost, beginning to pull away from the marina on an oversized white and black, open-topped speedboat. Mitch began to sprint. He was the fastest on his lacrosse and track teams every year of high school, and he was undoubtedly the fastest at The Barn, although he always held back, never wanting to tip his hand completely to let everyone know what exactly he was capable of.

He plotted a course, as he realized that he was running out of dock and would soon lose his target. Mitch jumped up onto the deck of a docked yacht, running across it, and leaping with all of his might onto the back of Ghost's vessel. 

Ghost turned at the sound of Mitch thudding against the white cushioning meant for lounging on the back of his boat. He turned and ran towards Mitch, their bodies colliding as they began wrestling and beating on each other. The boat continued on its course, without Ghost driving, as the two men struggled against each other. Neither of them were able to get the upperhand, as they were both equally skilled. They tumbled down the short staircase into the cabin below and Mitch glanced over and saw a gagged and bound Stan strewn across a pile of life vests. In that moment of distraction, Mitch looked up, and saw the tread on Ghost's boot come down across his face, and Mitch blacked out from the impact. 


	30. Day 106 (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willa finally comes face to face with Ghost and learns a shocking truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: SO MUCH TORTURE AND DEATH. oops

Willa glanced behind her as she and Aiden ran down the alley behind the hotel, that was supposed to serve as the team's safe house in Rome, but Ghost had probably always known exactly where they were, and he had come to collect the other half of the team. She heard a few more shots ring out, echoing against the bricks on the buildings on either side of her, and she ducked behind a large dumpster. She peeked back around the side, and saw Aiden laying face down on the uneven concrete. It was dark, the early hours of the morning, well before the sun was meant to rise, and Willa could not remember when she last actually slept, but she could see clearly enough. Her stomach jumped up into her throat as she realized that he was no longer moving. Aiden and Willa had come to odds at certain points in this specific mission, but she had known him for years and he was her friend and now he was likely dead. The man ran past Willa, not realizing she had ducked out of the way when Aiden went down. He circled back around when he figured he had lost her, but Willa was waiting. She jumped out from behind the dumpster as he leisurely walked past, and hit him on the side of the head, with considerable force, with the butt of her Glock, rendering Ghost's underling unconscious. 

* * *

Willa circled the abused man sitting in the metal chair in the center of the room, watching him slightly flinch every time the heel of her boot would connect with the ground and the noise echoed loudly through the room. He examined the paraphernalia around the musty room and was confused by what he saw. He watched as she screwed the silencer onto the end of her handgun slowly.

"You know, I was trained to be an assassin for much longer than most... really, for the majority of my life, I've been trained in one way or another to be an asset for my government." Willa sat in the chair across from Ghost's associate, and smiled, looking eerily relaxed as she rested the gun against her thigh. "One of the things I really excelled at during my training was ' _information extraction_ '. My mentor, the man that your boss abducted, he once let me waterboard him for four straight hours....." Willa snickered and stared down at the gun in her hand. She ran the pads of her fingers on her left hand across the smooth and cold metal. "It was a... a competition, I guess you could say, to see who would yield first." Willa chuckled a little louder, still stroking her firearm. "I think you can probably guess who won." She finally made eye contact with the man across from her, smiled, and then abruptly lifted her gun and shot the man in his left foot. 

The man screamed in agony, knocking the chair backwards onto the cement floor beneath him. Willa walked around and pulled the chair back upright. She waited for him to finally stop crying in pain, before she spoke again.

"I'm impressed, really. I've been told how much that hurts, so to not tell me where Ghost has taken my people, is, well, really it's a loyalty that I can respect. But you know what I've heard hurts even more than a bullet hole through the bones of your feet?" Willa crouched in front of Ghost's associate and smiled, glancing down at the gun in her hands. She pressed the barrel of the gun against his forehead and felt him shake against it in fear. She quickly aimed it at his right knee and pulled the trigger. 

The man screamed even louder than the last shot, and Willa circled behind him, dragging the hot barrel against the exposed skin on the nape of his neck. He cried out in pain as Willa continued speaking. " _Now_ , you screamed louder, so I think that that proves that the knee is _definitely_ more painful than the foot. What do you have to say about it?" She smiled directly in his face and he spat at her.

Willa arched her eyebrows and contorted her mouth, then straightened up. She walked over to the table where her bag was, placed her gun down, pulled a towel out and wiped at her cheek. "I know I shot you twice, but I still think _that_ was the rudest thing anyone has done in this room this afternoon." Willa said as her back was turned to the man bleeding in the chair. 

"Fuck. You." 

Willa smirked. He spoke. She was getting to him. "All you have to do is tell me where they are and what Ghost is planning and I'll drive you to the hospital myself. I promise." She told him, as she leaned her butt against the edge of her supply table. 

"I'm not telling you shit, bitch. There's nothing you can do that would make me talk." 

The corner of Willa's mouth curved upwards and she shook her head. "That's what your friend said before she told me everything I wanted to know." Willa spoke smugly, and watched his face contort in genuine anger. "Do you want to know what I did to finally get her to talk?"

"It doesn't matter. She was weak. I'm loyal." He told Willa.

"Well, loyalty is fine. I always did love a good challenge." Willa pulled out a canvas bag, and the man flinched when he heard metal clanking around in it, as she brought it over to the chair across from him. "I excelled in the long run, but at first, I really struggled with the, uh, what did President Bush's administration call it again....? Oh... right." Willa laughed. "' _Enhanced interrogation methods_.'" She used air quotes as she discussed torture. "Anyway, I really, I just had such a hard time stomaching the use of ' _enhanced interrogation methods_ ' at first when I was training. But my mentor, he really took me under his wing about it. He wanted me to succeed. He thought that the best way to get me to get over my discomfort in hurting someone else, was to hurt me..." Willa crouched in front of the man again and laid her left hand flat across his left knee, then ran her fingers up against the inside of his thigh, bringing them back down to rest on the top of his leg. He twitched at her touch. "Do you know how long it took for my nails to grow back?" She held up her hand in the air for both of them to see. "They look good now though, don't you think?" She smiled toothily at him and he looked at her with disgust. 

"It doesn't matter what you do to me, I won't tell you a fucking thing." 

" _See_ , at least you didn't call me a name this time. _Progress_." Willa clapped her hands together, rubbed them a few times, grinned at him, and then unfolded the canvas cloth containing her instruments of torture. She held up a six inch long metal nail and a pair of pliers in her hands. "Now, usually, I'd ask you which you wanna start with first, but considering, I'm afraid that you might pass out from loss of blood before I can get to both fun activities, I'm just gonna have to go ahead and alternate between the two, which sucks, because I really do love consistency." She faked a frown.

"Ghost is going to fucking kill you and your friends." 

Willa's demeanor changed at his threat, and she rushed up to the tied up man. She grabbed him hard by the chin and spoke in hushed tones. "You better hope he fucking comes here and does that before I'm done with you because you will be _begging_ him to kill you too when I'm finished." Willa stopped smiling and whispered her threats directly into his face. 

* * *

 Willa pulled the last metal rod out from underneath his fingernails and tucked it back into the canvas bag it came in. She wiped his blood off her hands with a towel and picked up her secure satellite phone. She stared at the passed out man from across the room as the line rang. "He talked, and Director, it's so much worse than we thought."

"Give me the full report, Agent." Irene said on the line.

Willa opened her laptop on the rickety table and began typing into a secure chatroom. "Not only is he attacking highly populated port cities, but the United States Mediterranean naval fleet has warships stationed in Tel Aviv, Barcelona, and Athens, but Ma'am, the largest fleet is here in Rome." Willa explained. "You need to get the Polizia di Stato down to Fiumicino to begin sweeping the area for the nuke that's here, and it's up to the government, but Irene, they should really start evacuating the city now."

"If they do that, Ghost may alter the plan and we may lose him again and end up with an even more devastating attack later." Irene weighed the consequences of informing the Italian government of _all_ of the new developments. "What are you going to do while the Polizia are sweeping the airport and the water?"

"He told me where Mitch and Stan are being held. I'm gonna go get them. The best chance we have of stopping this is if all three of us are back in the game." Willa explained, as she finished her download of information and shut her computer. "Also, you should either call someone or send someone down here to get this guy to a hospital before he actually does bleed out."

"We'll take care of him. Good luck, Agent." 

Willa hung up the phone and closed her laptop, putting them away, stuffed her gun in the back of her jeans, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out of the basement, leaving the man unconscious and still tied up to the chair. She encountered the man who gave her the room when she came into the building a few short hours before. Willa smiled and tucked her jacket over her gun. She gave a small curtsy, and kissed the gaudy ring on the man's hand. "Grazie mille, Padre. The Director said she would be sending someone over to clean up as soon as she could."

"Go in peace then, my child." The CIA operative posing as a priest said and smiled at Willa, as she nodded and then walked out of the church and onto the busy and crowded Roman streets.

* * *

 Willa left her bag in the car and began walking through the winding tunnels of the Roman catacombs underneath the city. She thought back on the directions that the man who she had tortured gave her and she made a left turn. Artificial light began to grow brighter up ahead and Willa picked up her pace; she had found the hideout where Ghost was keeping Mitch and Stan. She breached the room, clearing the corners and making sure that no one was there. She saw only Mitch and Stan, tied to chairs, in the center of the room, both beaten but Stan much worse off.

" _Fuck_..." Willa tucked her gun in the back of her jeans, pulled out the switchblade she carried in her boot, and began cutting the zip-ties around Mitch's feet. "Are you okay?" She whispered up at the man she loved, beaten, bloodied, bruised and tied to a chair. 

"Willa, you don't understand what's happening here..." Mitch began, as she cut the last of the multiple clear plastic ties connecting Mitch's legs to the legs of the metal chair he was in. 

Willa interjected before he could finish. "I do know what's going on. Ghost sent someone after Aiden and I, and Aiden didn't make it, but I got him to talk and I figured out Ghost's entire plan. He's trying to blow u-"

"Willa, _no_ , you don't understand who Ghost is. Stan has been lying to you."

"Shut the fuck up, Rapp." Stan cut Mitch off, his pain apparent in his voice. "Untie me, Willa." Stan looked even more badly beaten than Mitch, his left eye barely opened, several of his fingers broken, along with many fingernails missing, and large and small cuts and scrapes littered his flesh. 

"You have to fucking tell her now, Stan." Mitch argued. "Willa this was a trap, you shouldn't have come here. Ghost, he-"

"I said shut the fuck up, Rapp. I swear to god, I'll kill you myself." Stan yelled, shaking his chair as he struggled against his restraints to get to Mitch.

" **TELL HER**." Mitch yelled back. Stan remained quiet and then looked up behind Willa when he heard another voice come from the hallway.

" _Well, if you won't tell her, I will_." Ghost appeared in the room, with his gun drawn at Willa. Willa grabbed at her gun quickly and pointed it back at the man who she had been hunting for days. He began to step out of the shadows and into the light where Willa could see him finally. " _Hey there, Willowtree_."

Willa stepped back and began lowering her gun, her mouth opened just barely and her brow completely furrowed, as she registered familiar features on Ghost's face. This was the first time she was seeing him up close and suddenly, it hit her like a massive wave. "Oh my god.... _Brandon_?"

"Long time, no see, little sis. Not exactly how I imagined this reunion though.... How about you lower your gun and come give your brother a hug." Ghost smiled the best he could and he held his arms out waiting for an embrace. 

Willa glanced back at Stan, who would not raise his head to make eye contact with her, then she looked at Mitch, who looked pained at what was unfolding in front of him. "I don't understand..." She looked beyond bewildered, and without realizing, she began to lower her gun slightly. "You're supposed to be dead. I went to your funeral.." Willa's eyes began to fill with tears, as she thought back on the pain and suffering she endured in her childhood when she became an orphan at the age of nine. She shook her head and fought back the tears, but her face became red and hot and they streamed down her cheeks anyway. "I watched Mom and Dad bring you to work with them that morning, I watched the footage, there was no way that you could've.... You are not my fucking brother." Willa's voice got lower and guttural as she got angrier. "My brother died with my parents on the 105th floor in the North Tower of the World Trade Center." Willa stopped crying and raised her gun back up to aim at Ghost's head. 

Ghost raised his hands in the air, moving his finger from the trigger to the side of the gun, becoming submissive to Willa's aim. He stepped back and looked at Stan. "If I'm not your brother, then why do you think that Uncle Stan, here, won't look at either of us right now? Think about it, Willowtree. You know that I look like Dad. I know you can see it."

Willa blinked away more tears, and glanced at Stan, who, in fact, would not make eye contact with anything other than the ground. She lowered her gun again and shook her head. "I don't fucking understand." 

Ghost walked over to the chair in the corner, pulled it closer to Mitch, and sat in it backwards, his arms leaning against the top of the back of the chair. He waved his gun and pointed it at Stan, gesticulating like his weapon was an extension of his hand, causing Willa to train her gun on him again. "Do you want to tell her the story of how we got here, or should I?" Stan scowled at Ghost and shook his head, resolved to remain in his silent state. " _Alright_ , well, good old Uncle Stan here, he is quite the secret-keeper, Willowtree." Willa remained silent, glancing between the three men in the room, unsure of what to do or say. "I wasn't up in the Tower when it came down, I was at the deli down the block getting breakfast before Dad was going to take me to school for a conference with my principal." Ghost directed his gaze back at his sister. "You see, Little Willow, I was having some troubles at that point, nothing any ordinary teenager wasn't doing though... But, good old Uncle Stan, he was my first call as soon as the phone lines began working again. He told me to stay put, and I did, I stayed in that deli until it closed, and the nice man who owned it let me sleep on his couch that night. All night, all I wanted to do was go home and be with my little sister, make sure she was alright, let her know that I was alright, but Stan had other thoughts."

"Don't listen to him, Willa. He's lying. He's insane." Stan finally spoke up. 

" **DON'T TALK TO HER, YOU SON OF A FUCKING BITCH**." Ghost lifted his gun to aim at Stan's head, and Willa raised hers again at him. 

"I don't understand what it is that you could have done that Stan felt it necessary to keep you a secret this whole time...." Willa finally spoke as well, and Ghost lowered his weapon. 

Ghost began to pace, rubbing the barrel of his pistol against his temple, clearly agitated. Willa took a step towards Mitch, and Ghost turned around quickly, aiming his weapon towards the man she loved. "Don't move, Willow. He's fine. They're both fine." Willa backed up from Mitch and stared at the clearly unhinged man in front of her. "I'm not fine though. I wasn't fine then either, was I, Uncle Stan?" Ghost asked, seething through his teeth. "You see, I was getting into some trouble back then. Fights, a little drinking, parties, and I guess that Mom and Dad told Uncle Stan because he saw an opportunity when the entire world, including my **BABY SISTER**..." He screamed towards Stan, who kept his eyes glued to the ground, scowling as he shook his head. "...thought that I was dead. Stan took me down to The Barn. He wanted to ' _straighten me out_ ', he said. ' _Give me direction.. a purpose_ '. But he just saw a kid with some anger who he could mold into a weapon." Willa lowered her weapon to her side and stared at Stan. She didn't understand any of this. "He promised me so many times that I could come back and see you when I was done with my rehab, then it was when I was done with my training. Training became the Orion program, the Orion Program became my first mission, then my second, then my third, then I realized that he was never going to let me back into your life. I was a Ghost because he wanted me to be." 

"It didn't happen like that, Willa. Please, you have t-" Stan tried to tell his side, but Ghost cut him off again. 

" **IT HAPPENED EXACTLY LIKE THAT. DON'T LIE. DON'T FUCKING LIE**." Ghost walked forward and pressed his gun against Stan's chest. 

"You need to step away." Willa raised her Glock 17M to Ghost's cheek, and he raised his hands and walked backwards until she lowered her firearm again. 

"Stan got me abducted and tortured and he never came for me. Him and the Agency, they acted like I never existed. They fucking burned me. I trusted him and he left me for dead. Now I'm going to show the mighty United States government what happens when they mistreat their own. I need to do this and then we can be a family again, you and I, Willowtree." Ghost stared at his younger sister. 

Willa shook her head. "This is insane. You sound _insane_. You need to let them go, and you need to stop this entire thing before those bombs go off. You're going to kill millions, and for what? Revenge against your uncle? Against the United States government? Stop this... What the fuck is wrong with you?" She stalled in her words. She knew what she would have to say in order to get to him. "Brandon, please. The boy I knew never would've done something like this." 

"I can't let them go. They'll stop it all. But it's okay, Willow. We can be a family again, I just need to take care of them first. Put this one out of the misery of becoming Stan's new ' _Ghost_ '. It'll be a much more merciful death than what he is guaranteed working for Uncle Stan, here." Ghost pointed his gun at Mitch and Willa leapt forward, pressing her Glock against his temple. 

"Step the _fuck_ away from him. Right now." 

Ghost stepped back a short length but kept his gun aimed at Mitch. "Well that's a development." He said glancing back and forth between Mitch and Willa. "We can't move forward until they are out of the way, Willa. You know that's true." He pulled the safety back on his gun and Willa fired her gun. 

Ghost dropped to the floor, clutching his mangled and smoking fingers, and screaming in agony. Willa had blown a hole right through his hand, a calculated risk to save the love of her life, but not kill the man that she was all but certain was her brother, come back from the dead. "Stay down, Ghost."

Ghost cocked his head to the side, and narrowed his eyes, still clutching his hand to his chest. " _Ghost_? You've been brainwashed too. You'd shoot your own brother to save him? _Him_?" He pointed at Mitch. "What the fuck is so special about _him_ that you and Stan love so much?!"

"Stop this. Stop all of this, come back and we'll figure this out. If Stan did what you said, we'll figure it out. Please just stay down." Willa plead with Ghost, who was laying on the floor beneath the fury of her firearm. 

"He can't come back with us, Willa." Stan interrupted. 

"I can't?! **_I CAN'T_**?! See, Willa? He deserves to die. He's never going to let us be together." Ghost sat up, reached behind him with his good hand and pulled a second handgun from the waistband of his jeans, and set to train it on Stan. 

Willa raised her firearm. "Stop."

"I can't." Ghost said, as he pulled back the safety. 

A shot rang out through the room and Ghost's body hit the ground with a soft thud. Blood began to pool around the exit wound in his head, on the uneven stone floor underneath his lifeless body. Willa stood over him for a few moments, the ringing that happens when a firearm is discharged in close quarters, still playing at a deafeningly loud pitch in her ears. 


	31. Day 106 (Part III)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch pursues the nuclear bomb headed for Rome's international airport and the U.S. Naval fleet, in an effort to stave off absolute disaster.

" _Willa.... WILLA!_ " 

The ringing in Willa's ears subsided when she heard Mitch screaming her name. She felt like she was being pulled back into her body in that moment; as if for the previous few moments, she had been floating above herself, simply watching the whole scene take place like an uninvolved bystander. She stared at the blood running into the crevices between the stones on the ground and then at the lifeless body that it was pouring out of.

"Will. Look at me." Mitch said in a calmer tone and Willa brought her gaze up to him.

"Fuck." She said quietly as she sprang to action, grabbing her knife off from the floor by Mitch's feet where she had dropped it earlier, and cutting at the zip-ties around Mitch's arms and legs again. 

"Willa, he still has the nukes in play. He sent one of his men off to the marina with it right before you got here." Mitch said as he stood from the chair and rubbed his wrists, hoping to get some blood flow back into his hands. 

"Okay, let me just get St-" Willa stopped when she felt her gun being pulled from the back of her jeans. She turned and saw Mitch sprinting out the door. "Son of a bitch." She realized that she should've predicted that that would happen. She turned back to her task at hand. 

"Will, you ha-" 

"If you think for a second that this is the time and place for this conversation, you are batshit fucking insane." Willa sneered at Stan, cutting him off from continuing. Stan fell silent. She quickly cut through his restraints and Stan slightly slumped over in his chair. Ghost had really done a number on him. 

Willa turned around and looked down at Ghost's lifeless body, collecting blood in a pool around him on the ground. She couldn't tear her eyes away. She forgot for a moment what was going on around her. He looked like her father, and part of her wanted to believe that it was all a matter of persuasion that she thought this, but she was held back from that train of thought when she saw something glimmer on Ghost's wrist. She crouched down next to his body, avoiding stepping in his draining vital fluid, and unclasped the metal from around his wrist. She held a rose gold 1958 Omega wrist watch in her hand, and she choked back tears and vomit. It was official, she had killed her own brother. 

"Willa...." Stan's voice sent shivers down her spine. "You have to dig in now. Call the IADF, get them down here, and then go after Mitch. Help him." Stan winced up at her through a broken left eye socket. 

Willa nodded and wiped the back of her hand across her nose, shoving the snot back into her nasal cavity. She reached down towards Stan and latched the watch onto his wrist. She turned and began running out after Mitch. 

* * *

 

Mitch was pursuing the long white speedboat that Ghost's most trusted associate was on with the nuclear bomb. Ghost's associate was racing on a suicide mission towards Rome's major international airport, close to where the larger part of the United States' Mediterranean based naval fleet was docked. Mitch had to stop the attack. He was certain that he wouldn't make it back alive which is why he decided to take off without Willa. 

Mitch found a fisherman untying his ropes from the cleats on the dock and he flashed his gun. He boarded the vessel and tried to remember the Italian that Willa had taught him on the plane. He leaned over and untied the last cleat for the man, and pushed the boat away from the dock. The older man did not yell or fight or flee, he simply watched Mitch out of fear, standing next to the controls. 

Mitch rubbed his face, trying to remember. "Inizio" He said with a crappy Italian accent, hoping that that was the correct word for 'start'. He turned his fingers to mimic turning a key in an ignition. The man understood and started the boat. "Seguitelo per favore." Mitch pointed towards Ghost's associate, who's boat was getting small in the distance. The man nodded and began following the other boat. "Rapido." Mitch requested, and the man nodded again and pushed the throttle down further, causing the boat to accelerate. "Grazie." Mitch thanked him for his help as he came up behind the boat. Mitch tried to remember the words for 'left' and 'right', directions were always the first things that Willa tried to learn when tackling a new language, and it was a habit that Mitch was learning to embrace. "Shit... what was it.. "A sinistra?" The man chuckled and nodded, and began pulling up to the left side of the other boat. "Andare a casa." Mitch yelled to the kind man as he pulled up along side the boat, hoping that he understood Mitch's request to get out of harm's way. He nodded graciously at the man, then leapt, once again, onto the back of Ghost's speedboat. 

Ghost's henchman was not as talented as Ghost, however, and not nearly as quick. As soon as Mitch rolled onto the white padding, he rolled off, hopped onto his feet, got behind the henchman, and snapped his neck. There was no fight, there was no commotion, the man simply withered onto the floor by Mitch's feet. Mitch kicked him off to the side and climbed down the steps into the cabin. He spotted the bomb and carefully approached it. A timer was ticking away. Seventeen minutes.

* * *

 

Willa did as she was directed by Stan, and called Irene on an unsecure line.

"Ma'am, I have Stan. I killed Ghost, but Mitch went after the you know what."

"Willa, you have to help Mitch." Irene sounded more frantic than Willa had ever heard her. "Get the Italian Air Force on the line!" She yelled at someone in the background. "Stay where you are, we are pinging your phone and getting your air support from our boys." 

"Yes, Ma'am." Willa stayed on the line until she heard the sounds of chopper blades slicing through the air.

 

* * *

 "Willa, you can't come out here. It's not safe. Just stay out of the blast radius and know that I lo-"

"Shut the fuck up, Mitch. Don't you dare. I am coming to get you. Just keep getting to open water, I'm coming for you." Willa cut him off. 

Mitch lowered the radio from his face and directed the boat further into the empty sea. He knew that he wasn't far enough away though. He contemplated pushing the throttle down to its highest limit, but he knew that the helicopter would never be able to catch up to him if he did. He weighed his options and decided that saving Willa and millions of innocent people was more important than being saved himself. He pushed gently against the throttle, accelerating the speed of the boat gradually, readying himself to defy Willa's orders. He glanced behind him one last time, and in the distance saw an approaching Chinook helicopter. He pulled back on the throttle slightly and allowed the helo to catch up.

Mitch heard the metal blades of the Chinook slicing through the gray and cloudy sky to reach him. Once it had gotten in a close proximity, he pushed the throttle all the way down and left it, the boat was now careening towards the middle of the sea, towards more empty water and away from the Mediterranean fleet. The Chinook military helicopter managed to keep up with the powerful engine of the speedboat, and Mitch glanced at the timer on the bomb: three minutes and counting. He reached up as a metal tether with a steel carabiner clip at the end descended towards Mitch from the helicopter above. 

Mitch wrapped the metal line around his chest, securing it with knots that he knew would hold and clipping the carabiner around it just for extra security. He began to ascend from the boat, which slipped away from under his feet and continued on its journey to open waters, and up towards the now hovering helo. Mitch reached his hand out to the man in an olive green U.S. Air Force uniform and was hoisted on board the vehicle by an extra set of hands. He looked up and saw Willa straining to pull him back into the safety of the Chinook by the waist of his jeans. He crawled and scrambled to get further into the safety of her arms. She held him for a fleeting moment, and then looked up at the pilot. She swirled her pointer finger in the air in a circular motion and spoke into the microphone on her headset. "Let's get the fuck out of here." 

"Copy that, Ma'am." The pilot turned back around and the Chinook took off in the opposite direction of the speedboat. Mitch pulled the knots apart and untied the metal tether from around his body and hugged at Willa, who held him impossibly close against her. 

"Ma'am.. Sir... We have to get you strapped into seats." The Air Force officer who pulled Mitch into the helo told the two of them.

Willa nodded and watched as Mitch settled into a seat and got strapped in. She buckled herself back into the jumpseat she was in previously, across from Mitch, and she examined all of the cuts and bruises on his face and how torn up his shirt and arms were. Drying blood dripped from his nose and his right hand was stained red, and Willa felt every fiber of her being screaming out to touch him. Mitch made eye contact with her. He flashed three fingers up against his chest and then pointed down with his thumb. Willa focused, nodded, and adjusted her microphone back in front of her face. 

"We got less than two minutes boys, why don't we haul ass outta here." She asked rhetorically.

"Copy that, Ma'am." The pilot responded. 

" _I'm okay._ " Mitch mouthed to Willa. She pursed her lips together and nodded. "Are you okay?" He asked silently. Willa shook her head.

A few moments later, a deafening noise filled the air, and Mitch and Willa's heads snapped around to see that out of the window, to their right, the direction from where the boat had traveled, a massive and watery mushroom cloud shot up into the blue and cloudy sky. Willa had never seen anything like it. Entire aircraft carriers and naval destroyers were being tipped over like leaves in a pond on a blustery day. It was a sight to behold, but she suddenly wasn't sure if she would see anything ever again, as the shockwave finally hit the helicopter and it began careening to the left. The pilots tried correcting but the impact was too harsh and they were still too close. They were going down. Mitch braced himself and waited for the collision.

Mitch's eyes opened and he saw the fuselage rapidly being engulfed, as it sunk into the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. He heard the engine dying down from the propellors above the helicopter and he understood how they would have to make it back to the surface. Mitch looked at Willa, who had a stream of blood dripping from her hairline and her body was limp, moving with the motions of the water surrounding her. Mitch frantically detached the seatbelt from across his chest and he swam over to her. Her seatbelt was stuck. He reached into her boot and grabbed her knife, quickly cutting through the woven fabric of the harness. Willa's body began to float to the top of the fuselage, and Mitch turned to check on the pilots. One was conscious and trying to help get his knocked out partner out of his seat. He waved for Mitch to go. The helicopter was completely submerged and the blades had ceased their rotations. Mitch wrapped his fingers around Willa's wrist and began swimming up to the surface. 

He gasped for air as he made it above the water. Willa's head slumped over and Mitch pulled her back against his chest. He listened for signs of breathing but heard none. Frantically, he began pressing his hands against her chest in a strange mixture of the Heimlich maneuver and CPR. "For fuck's sake, Willa, breathe!" He shouted. Her head shot forward and she coughed up a fair amount of water. "Will?... Will?!" Her body remained slumped forward and Mitch pressed her ear to her back; she was finally breathing but she was still unconscious. Mitch had only managed to wake her respiratory system up. 

He held her up against him again, her head slinking backwards against his shoulder. He pushed her up above the water, sinking below it himself, every time a wave would crash down on them. Mitch had to make a decision: stay by the wreckage of the downed helo or swim to shore with Willa wrapped around his back. He decided it would be safer if he stayed put. Mitch and the two helicopter pilots tread water for two hours, until finally the motor from the Italian Coast Guard boat perked up all of their ears. All four were pulled from the rough waters and brought back to shore. 

* * *

"So it was the only one that went off?" Willa asked, sitting up in the hospital bed, staring at Irene and Stan, who was propped up on a set of crutches. Mitch stood in the corner of the room, his back pressed against the wall, one knee bent, pressing his foot against the wall to stabilize himself, and his arms folded across his chest, watching as Irene updated Willa on what happened after the nuke went off and their helicopter went down.

"Because of what you and Mitch did, no civilians were harmed and all of the other bombs were recovered before they could be set off in any other city.... The world owes the two of you a massive debt, Willa." Irene said graciously.

Willa shook her head. "We were just doing our jobs, Ma'am."  

"Well, you certainly did them well. Rest up, Agent. We'll see you stateside." Irene put her hand on Hurley's shoulder and directed him out of the room.

Stan paused to glance back at Willa, who was staring at Mitch sitting on the edge of her bed. He watched as Willa wrapped her hands around Mitch's neck and embraced him in a kiss. Stan whipped his head around to look at Irene who smiled and shook her head. 

"Did you know about this shit?" Stan asked loudly, and Irene pulled him away from the open door. 

"I had an inkling."

"You have to cut that shit off at the legs. They aren't allowed to do that."

"Why? Because she's your niece?" Irene asked with a chuckle.

"Because they're both agents!"

"They aren't, Stan. Only Willa is, or will be when we get back to Langley. Mitch is Orion, he's not part of the CIA... you know that, and frankly, those two are currently our country's most valuable assets, so I am not going to piss them off by telling them that they can't be together." Irene brushed Stan off with the truth. "Come on, Stan. Leave them be."

Stan begrudgingly followed after Irene.


	32. Day 116

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By Day 109, Willa and Mitch have returned back to Virginia and back to The Barn to finally collect their things, when Stan decides that it is finally time that Willa learns the truth. 
> 
> On Day 111, Willa stops by Irene's office at Langley to discuss specific arrangements.
> 
> But on Day 116, Willa finally becomes a legitimate CIA agent and discusses hers and Mitch's future's with The Agency.

_"Willa?" Stan knocked on the doorframe and Mitch and Willa's heads shot up. They had been milling about her bedroom, packing it into boxes, readying her to move out of The Barn for good. Mitch took a solid four minutes to pack his bedroom up, as he had not brought much with him in the first place. Willa, however, had made The Barn into her home, and she had to put things in boxes. However, Willa's arm was in a sling since being shot back in Istanbul, and Mitch had to do most of the heavy lifting._

_Mitch glanced over at Willa to see what she would do. "What do you want?"_

_"I want to talk to you.. alone, if possible."_

_Willa shook her head. "If you want to stay, then Mitch stays too."_

_Stan sighed, but took the invitation that he got. He closed the door behind him and examined the room. It was bare, which made him sad. He was going to miss having Willa around every day. "Can I?" Stan gestured to Willa's wooden desk chair, and watched as she nodded. "Uh, if you would.." Stan gestured to Willa's bed, as he sat down across the room in her chair. Willa remained standing next to her dresser, with Mitch behind her._

_"I asked Irene not to send you on that mission." Stan began, starting off the conversation on the wrong foot._

_Willa tisked her tongue against the backs of her teeth, and bit lightly at her top lip, all while shaking her head. Mitch sighed behind her; he knew that comment would piss her off. "So you could continue fucking hiding my brother from me? You fucking son of a-"_

_"No, no! Shit." Stan sighed and dropped his head. "Okay.. No, I didn't want you finding out about him like that, but I- oh god, I don't know, Willa. So much time had passed and there would have been no good time to tell this story."_

_"Am I supposed to feel bad for you right now, Stan?" Willa asked, contorting her face in anger. "I don't need to listen to this." Willa placed stepped towards the door and placed her hand on the knob, when she felt Mitch grab her wrist to stop her._

_"Will... you're going to regret not hearing his side of the story. Come on.."_

_Willa relented to Mitch, and followed him over to the edge of her bed. They sat down next to each other, and Mitch remained holding Willa's hand, partly to comfort her and partly to keep her in place. Stan began his version of the story._

_"Brandon said.."_

_Willa cut Stan off. "Don't call him that." She gripped Mitch's fingers tightly in her hand, redirecting her rage. Mitch happily took it._

_"Uh.. Ghost..." Stan glanced up at Willa, who remained silent, so he continued. "Ghost.... no, fuck, I'm sorry, Willa, but this is about your brother. Brandon was getting into trouble back in 2001. He was falling in with the wrong crowd at school and your parents had a meeting with his principle, that afternoon, to discuss whether they should pull him out and send him somewhere else or whether the administration felt that they could turn things around."_

_"School had just started though.. how had he already...."_

_"It had started before the last school year had ended. He came home drunk, got into a fight with your Dad.." Stan rubbed his hand back and forth over his thin salt and pepper hair. He started his next sentence a few times, always changing how he was potentially going to approach the story. He finally decided on a path. "On September 11th, 2001, your brother was supposed to go to work with your parents and then they were all going to go down to the school for the meeting. But, I guess he had snuck out the night before because he wasn't in his bed when your parents went to wake him up."_

_A thought occurred to Willa, and she had to know. "Would.... would they have... they would've been at the meeting instead of in the North Tower when the planes hit if Brandon had been there, wouldn't they?" Stan nodded slowly, and Willa buried her face in Mitch's shoulder. Mitch let out an angry sigh as he stroked her hair to calm her, as Willa cried softly into his shirt._

_"Where was Brandon that morning, Stan?" Mitch asked, finally speaking up._

_"He was at a friend's house down in the Bowery... he was high off his ass. He had gotten into the rich kid shit, you know what I mean? Coke and booze and weed and pills... I don't know how kids these days even get their hands on that shit in the first place but he was getting in deep." Willa lifted her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She was stunned._

_"I had no idea."_

_"You were nine, Willa, your parents wanted to keep you young and innocent. They didn't want Brandon's issues to become your burden." Stan tried to comfort her._

_Mitch contorted his face and spoke up again. "I don't understand how we get from a fifteen year old Brandon doing coke down in The Bowery with his friends to Ghost doing what he did last week."_

_Stan scowled at Mitch, but he knew that he would have to explain. He just didn't appreciate Mitch's presence or involvement in his family's business. Willa perked up. She didn't understand that either, and she still wasn't sure what the truth was. She felt her rage towards Stan bubbling back up under the surface again._

_Stan continued. "Have you ever thought about how long it took me to get to you on that day, Willa?" Stan asked._

_"...The bridges and tunnels were closed.. the subways and PATH were shut down.. the city was.."_

_Stan cut her off. "But for someone like me? Someone with my connections? You never thought about it?" Willa furrowed her brow. The thought somehow never occurred to her. "Brandon called me sometime around noon when one of his shitty friends went outside and saw the smoke and asked someone what had happened. He told me where he was, and I knew.. Your Dad was my best friend, and he kept me informed as to what was happening with you kids. I knew what Brandon being in the Bowery instead of at school on a Tuesday morning meant. I used my connections and I got to him within the hour. I was already on my way up to Manhattan after the news broke that morning. He was so high... I didn't want you to see him like that, so I sent him down with Aiden."_

_"Aiden?" Mitch asked. "Breen?"_

_Stan nodded. "He came up with me that morning, and he took Brandon back in the helo we hitched a ride in. I hoofed it the rest of the way to you." Stan looked at Willa, an apathetic look resting on her face._

_"So you did keep him from me?" Willa accused.  
_

_"I was only going to for a few days. No one was thinking logically at that point, and that's not an excuse, but it's what I've got. I wanted to get him clean, so I sent him to The Barn with Aiden for a week." Stan sighed and shook his head, staring down at his shoes against the mahogany wood floors. "We tried rehabs, but he kept falling back into trouble, and he was aggressive... he was angry."_

_"What was wrong with him?" Mitch asked, and Willa scowled up at him, then whipped her head around when Stan answered._

_"So many things. I didn't realize any of them until I asked my friend Tom Lewis to come and observe him many years later."_

_"Who's Tom Lewis?" Mitch asked._

_"He's a clinical psychologist... a friend of Stan and Irene's.. he freelances for The Agency sometimes. You saw him. He was the guy who was sort of hovering around The Barn your second week there." Willa reminded Mitch of a man that he had all but forgotten about and had always assumed was either one of Stan's bosses or an instructor that stayed behind the scenes. "What'd Lewis say?" Willa asked Stan._

_Stan rubbed his rough palm over his face, dragging his hand down the bridge of his nose and towards his chin. "A lot of technical doctor shit, but basically, Brandon suffered from auditory hallucinations. He was hearing voices that weren't there, and he was trying to drown them out with the drugs. He was angry, and he barely controlled that. He had issues with impulse control and a real obsessive personality. He was just deeply troubled, and we got him on meds and he just wanted nothing to do with them. He said that the routine and the exercise of The Barn was what was best for him, and it seemed to be helping to curb his behavior so, we got him a tutor and he finished high school from The Barn."_

_"If... I was here in the summers in high school. Are you telling me that I saw Brandon then but didn't recognize him?" Willa questioned, trying to poke holes in Stan's story._

_Stan shook his head and continued rubbing his hands together, nervously. "When you and Beth and the boys would come here in the summers, Brandon would go off to The Farm to learn more tradecraft. Your third summer here, Brandon was already a part of Orion and going on missions though. He was convinced that he could find UBL and take out Al-Qaeda, and fuck if that boy didn't try."_

_"He was going after UBL?" Mitch questioned, surprised at the high priority target._

_"Yea, he went down to Gitmo a few times and interviewed KSM in an effort to get leads on UBL, but nothing panned out, then when Seal Team Six took him out in 2011, he kind of went on a bender. I tried to get him to give up his plans and go see you, Willa, I really did..... But he just kept saying, I can't see her until the people who killed our parents are all dead. She deserves that peace, she deserves it."_

_Willa was getting angry. She stood, held back by Mitch's grip on her wrist. "I DESERVED A BROTHER!" She yanked at her arm, but Mitch wouldn't relent. "Let me fucking go. I need a break from this bullshit. I need some air." Mitch let go and he and Stan watched her walk out of her bedroom, slamming the door behind her as she went._

_Mitch sat in his spot on Willa's bed and stared at Stan. "What was with all of the cuts and scars on his body?" Mitch asked._

_Stan raised his head, and grimaced. "He embedded with some locals in the mountains in Afghanistan with a group of four other agents. The mission went south real fucking fast because Brandon couldn't keep his anger in check. He and the others got taken and we knew where they were but..." Stan paused and shook his head. "More lives would have been lost than would have been saved if we had gone in to rescue them. They tortured and fucked with them. Three died. Brandon and that Jennifer Blake zealot survived.. Maybe if I had gone for him, none of this would have happened."_

_Mitch shook his head. "It doesn't really matter what you should've done then, now, does it?"_

_"It does to her, you little fuck." Stan pointed to the door, but was gesturing for Willa._

_"I think deep down, she knows the truth. It'll take time, but she'll come around."_

_"You clearly don't know how stubborn she is." Stan scoffed at Mitch's bullshit optimism._

* * *

"I'm sorry Mitch couldn't come to the ceremony." Irene apologized to Willa as they walked away from the graduation ceremony at The Farm. Willa was now officially a member of the Central Intelligence Agency.  

"It's fine. He's not a part of the CIA and anyway, I suppose people aren't really supposed to know about him, or us, so.. It's fine." Willa half-smiled up at her new boss and longtime friend.

"Willa, can you meet me back at my office in, oh, I don't know, about an hour?" Irene checked her watch and then adjusted it back under the sleeve of her suit jacket.

"Is everything okay?"

Irene nodded and then smiled. "We need to discuss your next assignment." She patted Willa on the shoulder and then stepped inside of the idling black SUV on the street. She paused before she closed the door, and looked at Willa. "I'm proud of you, Agent Hurley."

"Thank you, Ma'am." Willa nodded once, then watched Irene close the door as the car pulled away, leaving Willa on the curb alone, watching as Irene drove back to Langley.

* * *

_"You asked to see me, Ma'am?" Willa glanced at Stan, sitting in one of the club chairs in front of Irene's desk. He barely looked up. Mitch had been right. Willa believed his version of the story, and they had mended fences over Ghost, but Willa was still livid at him for lying to her for so long. The trust had been broken and the relationship was in a state of disrepair._

_"Come on in, Hurley." Irene glanced up from behind her desk and gestured for Willa to sit next to Stan, which she begrudgingly did. "How's the arm?"_

_Willa looked down and gently rubbed the fabric on her dark blue sling. "It's fine, Ma'am. Doc said I needed to wear the sling, but I think it's healing just fine without."_

_"Well, why don't we keep listening to the doctor's anyway? That thing was pretty infected by the time we got you to the hospital in Rome." Irene picked up her coffee mug and loudly sipped from it, then pressed her elbows against the wood grain of her desk, focusing in on Willa's face. Willa nodded at Irene's instruction, and Irene decided to end the pleasantries. "Willa.." Irene paused. "I don't know how to start this.. We brought Bran.. um, Ghos... uh... the body.. back to the States with us."_

_"Okay.." Willa looked over at Stan, who had sunk further into his chair and refused to make eye contact with Willa. "What are you planning on doing with it?"_

_"Well, considering you are his next of kin, that decision is yours." Irene explained._

_"Is that why you brought it back here? For me?" Willa was getting slightly agitated._

_Irene furrowed her brow and then nodded. She wasn't sure what she thought Willa's reaction was going to be anymore. Part of her expected Willa to be grateful for the opportunity, but Irene realized that maybe she didn't know the young woman sitting in front of her as well as she once did. Irene thought back on the events of the past few weeks and the past few months and contemplated how they had been shaping Willa. They had made her a bit more detached; more of a killer._

_Willa cleared her throat and shook her head. "I didn't ask anyone to do that."_

_"We.. I... well, Thomas and I, we assumed.." Irene was referring to her boss, Thomas Stansfield, and she realized she had made an error in judgement. "I'm sorry, Willa. We wanted to allow you and Stan and your family to grieve properly.. to bury him."_

_Willa stood, her tight black pencil skirt smoothing back over her legs as she straightened up. Stan and Irene stood in reaction to Willa. "I buried my brother when I was nine years old. That man was so far from the boy that I remember, it would be a disservice to Brandon's memory to even..." Willa paused and shook her head, her face was crinkled with anger and disgust and pain. "I grieved properly. I still do. I didn't need the bodies to say goodbye."_

_"I'll take care of it then." Stan offered, but Willa shook her head once more._

_"No. He wasn't my brother, but I still know what Ghost would've wanted. Cremate him and spread his ashes in the Mediterranean; that's clearly where he wanted to die." Willa spoke in a detached and clinical manner. She had no emotional ties to the monster that her brother grew to be._

_"I'll take care of it." Irene promised._

_"Do you need me for anything else, Ma'am?"_

_Irene shook her head. "You can go, Hurley."_

_"Thank you, Ma'am." Willa walked out of the room, but Irene and Stan remained standing, simply staring at each other wordlessly._

* * *

"Mitch, I am so pleased that you have managed to prove me right. You are quickly becoming our country's greatest asset. Everything you did last week... you have really turned out to be everything I hoped and more."

"Thank you, Ma'am." Mitch sat in front of Irene in a black sweater, pulled over a crisp white dress shirt with the collar poking out, and black dress pants. His hair was neatly combed for once and only the semblance of a five-o-clock shadow could be found on his face. He longed to leave Langley and get away from the formalities, however. 

"Because you are not CIA, though, Mitch, you and I can work out the details of how you think your time with Orion versus how I think your time with Orion should go." Irene explained. 

Mitch nodded. "I only have a couple of requests, Ma'am." Irene gestured for Mitch to speak freely, and then she went back to folding her arms in front of her and leaning back into her tall black leather desk chair. "I won't go on any missions until you let me take out Mansur and the Bahji."

"Fine. I already have my people working on it." Irene agreed. 

"Second, Willa wants a vacation. I think she deserves it. I know that's not usually how you start a new job but, considering you all forced her into killing her brother last week..." Mitch's sarcastic and blunt side always came back out eventually. 

Irene half-snorted and nodded. "I can probably get the two of you a few weeks off."

"A month." Mitch countered with a smile. He was trying to figure out how much of an upper hand he had in these negotiations. He was trying to figure out how badly Irene and Tom Stansfield wanted him to be Orion, and do America's bidding. 

Irene paused, hesitating a little too long, then submitted to his request. "A month, but if we get a hit on Mansur, you'll have to come back sooner." 

Mitch grinned. "That would be my pleasure."

"Is that it?" 

"I haven't even gotten to the important stuff yet." Mitch smirked and shook his head. 

"We don't need you that badly, Rapp." Irene tried to reassert her dominance. 

"Are you sure about that, Ma'am?" Mitch pushed back, with a large hint of arrogance dripping from his words.

Irene paused again, then rolled her eyes. "Just tell me what else you want, Rapp."

Mitch leaned back in his chair, and folded his hands casually over his torso. "Willa and I want to be based out of New York, and we don't want to live in D.C."

"That I can't give you." Irene finally put her foot down. "You can stay in New York when you aren't on missions, but you will need to be down here some of the time, or at least, Willa will need to be." Mitch huffed. "And you really shouldn't be putting your names down on any documents together if you want to remain as a couple, so no signing for leases under your real names."

"Get me an alias, then, Director." Mitch suggested. 

"We're working on it. Is that all?" 

"One last thing..." Mitch smirked and leaned forward. "I get that CIA agents aren't supposed to know about Orion, at least not really, and furthermore that we are not supposed to work together.."

Irene cut Mitch off. "Oh, hell no, Rapp. This one won't happen."

Mitch leaned back. "This is the only deal breaker, Ma'am. When Willa is on a mission for the Agency, that's fine if I get shipped off without her, but if we are both free when I get called up for something, she comes with me. Every time. Even Stansfield couldn't deny how good of a team we made. I believe he said something along the lines of 'the most valuable assets our country has in its possession right now.'" Mitch repeated Tom Stansfield, Director of the CIA's words after Mitch and Willa returned to the states from Rome, back to Irene who grimaced at his point. He knew how badly they wanted him to commit to Orion fully, and he was going to get what he wanted out of the arrangement.

Irene remembered that Mitch was the one that they wanted, but that meant that you got all of Mitch; both his serious and deadly side and his facetious and uncooperative side. You would never get one without the other, but to Irene, Stansfield, and the nation's security, Mitch Rapp was worth the trouble. "You wanna go on her missions with her too?" Irene asked sarcastically. 

Mitch bobbed his head to the side, then shrugged. "If I could sometimes, that'd be fine too. Why bother giving her a new partner when she already has one ready to go?"

"I was joking, Mitch." Irene leaned forward on her desk and shook her head at him. 

"No, I think that should be a part of the agreement as well. Irene, you all know that we are a good team, and the only reason that you all even know about our relationship is because we chose to stop hiding it from you and Stan. We will be discreet and we will be precise. She is my deal breaker. I won't do any of this without her as my partner in the field." Mitch gave his ultimatum. 

Irene leaned back in her chair and shook her head. "Fine. Can you stick around a couple more days while we hammer out a contract?" 

"No contract. Just give me your word, Irene." Mitch trusted Irene because Willa did, and he knew that leaving less of a paper trail towards him would also be wise. 

"Fine. You have my word. Willa will be your partner whenever the two of you are free at the same time. Mansur will be your first mission. We're going to have to discuss the living arrangements a little further, but go enjoy your vacation, Rapp. You earned it." Irene finally smiled up at the young man, who she had all of the faith in the world in.

Mitch stood and stuck his hand across her desk. Irene accepted his gesture and shook his hand, thus beginning a new chapter in Mitch's life. "Thank you, Ma'am."

Irene turned her chair towards her window and looked at the luxury car parked down below by the main entrance to the building. "You can tell Willa that she doesn't need to come up. We'll sort out her details when you two get back."

"Will do, Ma'am." Mitch said with a smirk. He liked his boss; very little got past her.

"Where you guys going?" Irene asked, stopping Mitch as he had the door to her office half open.

"We were thinking about Buenos Aires." Mitch said with a smile, before nodding and ducking out the door.

* * *

Willa sat in the backseat of her tinted Rolls Royce Phantom, with the engine idling, outside of Langley. Mitch pulled the sweater off over his head and opened the door to the backseat. Willa was dressed in a slinky, navy blue jersey wrap dress and nude platform sandals. Mitch shut the door behind him and the car smoothly took off. 

"Well if Irene knew what you looked like right now, she wouldn't have questioned why I wanted to have you as my partner in the field." 

Willa smirked and leaned in to kiss the man she loved. "Did she say yes?"

"Of course. I told her that I wouldn't be Orion if she didn't meet my stipulations."

"Well, I can't believe she fell for that." Willa snickered. 

Mitch smiled but furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?" 

"Oh please, Mitch, it may not be the reason you started this line of work, but you don't fool me. I know you just want to do what's right and protect people. You're just a big softy down deep."

Mitch smirked. She had seen right through him from day one. "Well, Irene doesn't know that yet, and good thing because she gave me everything I wanted." Mitch intertwined his fingers in hers and watched her bring his hand up to her lips. He felt the soft and smooth skin kiss the back of his hand, and then watched as she rested her chin on it. "I love you." He whispered. 

Willa smiled, and whispered back. "I love you, too." She dropped his hand into her lap and stroked the bit of arm hair coming out from under his sleeves. 

"Ma'am, remind me of what airline again?" The driver asked from the front as he lowered the partition. 

"Icelandair, and then once you drop us off, you are back up to New York to take a Steven Rapp and his clients out to Peter Lugers for dinner tonight, then Mr. Rapp will take the car off your hands at the end of the night." 

"Yes, ma'am."

"Did Irene ask where we were going?" Willa asked. 

Mitch snickered. "Yea, I told her Argentina."

"Well that'll really throw them off the trail, babe." Willa teased. 

"You excited for Iceland?" Mitch asked, leaning his head against the headrest behind him, and staring lovingly at Willa. 

Willa nodded. "Are you?" 

Mitch smiled wide. "I'm excited for it all."

 


	33. Day 120

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa get out of the United States and fly to Iceland for some much deserved rest and relaxation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to @mf-despair-queen and @thelittlestkitsune for their help with this chapter and just giving me an outlet for my excitement over it. also @awkwarddly and @sunshineystilinski

_Willa listened to the water running in the master bathroom, as Mitch had begun to take a shower upstairs. She wandered into her father's old office and looked at the books on the built-in shelves. Her eyes found the new addition that Mitch had left for her, and told her about at the start of their mission in Istanbul. She reached up on her tip-toes to pull it down. It was a fourth edition copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novel, The Great Gatsby; her favorite book._

_She felt her heart swell up as she dragged her palm across the dark blue and somewhat dingy fabric on the cover. She sat in her father's chair and rested the book gently on the desk in front of her. Her smile took over her face, but faded when she opened and flipped through the first few pages. The way that Mitch had talked about the book, she had expected there to be something written in it from him. She softly breathed out of her nose and raised her eyebrows once. She knew she shouldn't feel disappointed; it was really the gesture that counted. She shut the cover and pressed her palm against it once more, feeling the hardness of it against the pads of her fingers._

_She opened it one last time and flipped through the old and delicate pages. She opened the final page, to see how the page that held her favorite lines looked, how the ink stuck to the paper and how the font made the letters curl. Then she saw something: indents pushing through the old and thick paper. She turned the last page over and looked at the white paper covering the inside of the back cover, marked with an inscription in Mitch's handwriting. Her entire body filled with butterflies, and she sat on the edge of her father's old leather desk chair, leaning over the book, and began reading..._

 

**_April 5, 2017_ **

 

**_W,_ **

 

**_I saw a bookstore downtown and stepped inside hoping_ **

**_to find you a copy that you could hold dear because it came_ **

**_from me. I was overjoyed when I found this. I thought I'd_ **

**_write this in the back because only you would flip to the back_ **

**_of this book looking for the green light. You are my green light._ **

**_Always beckoning me back to the shore, back to safety, back to_ **

**_warmth. I cannot imagine my life without you. I hope I'll never_ **

**_have to._ **

**_I love you more than I could ever put down in words, W. I love_ **

**_you more than I have ever loved anyone else in my life. That_ **

**_is always going to be the case now._ **

**_Never forget that. No matter what happens._ **

 

**_M._ **

 

_Tears welled up in Willa's eyes as she felt an indescribable amount of warmth fill her heart. She ran her fingers over the indented words on the page and memorized how Mitch's words looked when he wrote how he loved her. He had written that forty-two days earlier. Willa closed the book and clutched it to her chest, shaking her head over the fact that it was possible to love someone as much as she loved Mitch._

_Before her brain understood what her heart was telling her feet to do, she was halfway up the spiral staircase in her living room. She opened the door to the bathroom and saw Mitch turn his head at the sound. He was blurred behind the steamed up glass of the shower, but she could make out his hand braced against the tiled wall, and his other hand wiping the water off of his face._

_"Will?" His husky voice was muffled by the sound of the running water._

_Willa opened the door to the shower and stepped in, the water making her yoga pants and shirt cling tightly to her body. Mitch stared at her, the slightest hint of a smirk coming from the confusion plastered across his face. She reached forward, the water spraying down on her, and put her hands against Mitch's wet face._

_"I love you too." She whispered, pressing her lips against Mitch's in a way that held a whole new meaning._

_Mitch ran his fingers through her now drenched hair, and smiled into her kiss. He held her head in his large hands and pulled away, staring deeply into her hazel eyes. He laughed softly to himself and shook his head. "I love you, Wilhelmina Hurley."_

* * *

Mitch had Willa pinned up against one of the retaining walls in the Blue Lagoon. It was 3pm and the sun was still high in the sky, only covered by clouds. He held onto her thigh with one hand, helping to keep her wrapped around his waist and afloat, and he sipped on his beer. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, letting the warm water soak her hair again, and soothe her muscles. She opened her eyes when she felt Mitch lean forward and place his beer back on the ledge behind her. 

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She said with a smirk. She knew exactly why he was looking at her the way he was. 

"Would you ever have a threesome?" Mitch asked, his lips curling up at the corners. 

"What?" Willa laughed and then looked around them. "Is there someone here that's piquing your interests.... that I need to drown?" 

Mitch laughed out loud at her response and shook his head. "Just curious."

"Oh yea, you're a twenty-four year old male who's ' _just suddenly curious_ ' about whether or not his girlfriend would have a threesome. Where is she? I'll kill her." She teased, scanning the crowd again. 

Mitch laughed a little louder. "I swear, I was just curious. Although, I think I'm getting the answer to that question."

Willa smirked and rubbed her wet fingers against his chest under the crystal blue water. "Maybe once upon a time, I would've said yes. Two dudes sounds kinky..." Mitch raised his eyebrows and snickered. "But now... I am entirely too possessive of you to share. I don't even like people being able to see you shirtless right now." She ran her hand down his chest towards his happy trail and he grinned at her answer. Mitch stopped her before her hand went into his white swim trunks, and he shook his head with a smirk. "Would _you_ ever have a threesome?"

Mitch thought for a moment, placing her hand back against his chest. "I think two minutes ago, I would've said yes, but after hearing your answer.. I'm realizing that I'm too possessive of you too. I'd have to kill whoever was our third after the fact."

"Only you could make threatening to kill someone sound sexy." She leaned in and connected her lips to his. Mitch wrapped both of his hands under Willa's ass and pushed her back against the ledge, as he forcefully kissed her back. He slipped his finger under her bikini bottom and glided it along her folds. She shuddered in his arms. "Mitch Rapp, you are being very naughty right now." She whispered against his lips. 

Mitch separated from her body, returning to their previous position, and grinned. "Would you ever... take it up that beautiful ass of yours?" Mitch grinned even further as he saw you shake your head and smile. 

"What has gotten into you right now?" 

"That's not a no."

"This is. No. You think that this dick wouldn't fucking wreck me?" Willa pointed down towards Mitch's length. "I like being able to walk.. or sit."

Mitch laughed and nodded. "Okay, okay, I'll cross that one off my list too." Mitch licked his lips and thought of the next one. "Dirty talk?"

"Don't I already do that?" Willa tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at him.

Mitch bobbed his head back and forth. "Fine, dirty talk with names." Willa smirked, quirking an eyebrow up.

"Such as?"

Mitch pursed his lips, pretending to think about it. "Sir... Daddy.. whatever." He tried to act nonchalant.

"Like, 'Please let me suck your cock, Daddy?'" Willa teased, and Mitch's mouth twitched up at the corners. Willa bit her lip. "Maybe."

"Would you ever let me tie you up?"

"Absofuckinglutely." Willa confirmed with lust in her eyes. 

"Blindfold you?" 

"Definitely." 

"Would you let me finger you in public?" Mitch asked, glancing down at her body, wrapped around his, under the water. 

Willa peeled his hand off of the wall behind her head, pulled her bathing suit to the side and pressed his fingers against her clit. She stared into his lustfilled amber eyes and bit the side of her bottom lip as Mitch's fingers began rotating small and slow circles against her. "Would you let me jerk you off in public?" She asked, assuming he'd say yes. 

"No."

"What?" 

"Well, I mean, it depends. You make a scene when it comes to my cock. I can be... more subtle when it comes to your tight, wet, fuckable little pussy." Mitch leaned forward, simultaneously whispering the last part in her ear and dipping two fingers inside of her. She moaned softly at the change. "If I thought you could keep quiet, I'd be so deep inside of you right now." 

She exhaled loudly in his ear, huffing at his words. "I can be quiet, Daddy." She said facetiously, trying to entice him, as she dug her nails into his shoulders. 

Mitch knew better. He smirked and shook his head. He looked at her face, still slowly thrusting his fingers in and out of her, and rolled his tongue behind his teeth. "No, you can't." Mitch wanted to get back to his game of twenty questions, especially now that he was getting her riled up. "So, baby... focus..."

Willa opened her eyes, pulled her nails from his skin, and chewed on the bottom right part of her lip. "Okay. What else?"

"Would you let me fuck you in public?" 

"Mitch, if you asked me to fuck you on the pavement behind us right now, I would... just, as long as I got to have this." Willa stared down at his bulky and cut body and pressed her fingertips against his ribs, causing Mitch to laugh. He loved that she was in a constant state of trying not to jump his bones. 

"Would you let me spank you?"

"If I had been bad..." Willa grinned and then exhaled loudly as Mitch thrust his fingers up inside of her hard. 

"You're being bad now."

"Then you can spank me later." Willa teased, causing Mitch to lean forward and bite her bottom lip. A loud moan came from her mouth, but Mitch didn't care. He was enjoying himself and if other people heard them, it really didn't matter to him. 

"I fucking will. Would you let me choke you?" Mitch raised his eyebrow as Willa mulled his request over. 

She pressed her tongue between her teeth and began to smirk. "If I was being too loud..." She felt his fingers pick up their pace against her g-spot. She knew Mitch was getting as riled up as she was. "If you don't stop, I'm gonna cum."

"I have no fucking intentions of stopping, Willa, so you're gonna have to bite that lip hard for me, baby." Mitch shook his head as he spoke, and pressed Willa harder against the ledge behind her. He sped his fingers up against her g-spot and waited for her to come undone. It took mere minutes but she quickly crumbled. "Shh, baby. Shhh." Willa spasmed in his arms and shoved her face into his clavicle, allowing the water to muffle any noises coming from her mouth. She felt Mitch pull his fingers out of her throbbing cunt, and she instantly missed the connection. He pressed a few kisses against the side of her neck and she came down. "I love you so much." He whispered in her ear. 

Willa finally lifted her head, sighed loudly, and made eye contact with a pleased looking Mitch. "I love you too, even if you do this shit to me in public."

"Did you want me to stop?" Mitch asked smugly.

Willa shook her head and smirked. "Are you done with your questions?"

"I had a few more..."

"Such as?" Willa challenged him. 

"Would you ever cum around my fingers and then lick yourself off of me?" Mitch had a shit eating grin on his face, that turned into genuine surprise when Willa grabbed his fingers from under the water, brought them up to her mouth and sucked. Mitch stared with intense concentration as her perfect lips suctioned around his fingers. "God damnit, you are so sexy." Willa smiled softly and adjusted herself in his arms. 

"Any others?" 

"Role playing?"

Willa leaned back against the ledge and closed her eyes. "What, like, hostage and assassin?" She joked. "Cause I wouldn't like that one."

"You don't want to be my hostage?" Mitch questioned, leaning in to place a gentle kiss on her exposed neck. 

"No. I mean, yes, I do but then every time you actually did take someone hostage, I'd wonder if you wanted to fuck them and then there would just be a lot of dead hostages and one of us would probably lose our job. It would be a mess." Willa joked. 

"So no roleplaying?"

"No, I'm down for that kind of stuff. You can be the doctor to my nurse or some bullshit." 

"What about wife, would you ever roleplay that with me?" Mitch asked, staring at Willa's closed eyelids. 

Willa's eyes swung open and she stuttered. "Are.... what.. are you being serious right now?" 

"Yea, maybe this wasn't the right time but I don't know, Will, if I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?"

Willa was completely thrown off guard. She unwrapped her legs from around Mitch's waist, stood on her tiptoes, and stared at him with a much more serious look set on her face. "Are you... asking me to marry you right now?" 

Mitch looked down at the space in between them and shook his head. "No, I'm just wondering what you're thinking about our future.. like, if one day I did ask you to marry me, would you say yes, or are you not thinking as long-term about this as I am?"

Willa closed the space between them again, feeling bad about how poorly she reacted just moments before. He had simply caught her off guard. She wrapped her hands around Mitch's biceps and leaned into him, tilting her head slightly to the side. "I'm thinking long-term, baby. I am. I'm in this for the long haul, so yes, if one day you asked me to marry you, I would absolutely say yes. I love you. I don't see myself ever wanting to be anywhere else but right here." She wrapped his arms around her waist as she finished her sentence, and she saw a grin begin to percolate on his lips. She leaned up and pecked them.

"Have you thought about kids?" Mitch asked.

"Have you?"

Mitch bobbed his head back and forth, not committing to a nod or a shake. "I guess. I don't want them anytime soon but I wouldn't mind building a family with you."

Willa was surprised at Mitch's openness and willingness to discuss his emotional desires. She was less willing to talk about the idea of bearing children. "I... I don't know. I'm still only twenty-five, so my biological clock isn't really ticking for anything more than a puppy at the moment, but I assume that one day I'll have the desire."

Mitch narrowed his eyes, catching how she danced around the question. "How about for now, what do you think of the idea?"

Willa sighed. "I... Honestly? It scares me. I like the idea of having your babies though. I like the idea of them being as smart and athletic and mole-speckled and clever as you. I like all of that. I want to see little you's running around and know that I get to take care of them."

Mitch smiled at her words, happy that she was at least thinking about a future where she would want his children. "I am so in love with you, Willa." Mitch leaned his forehead against hers.

"I wanna go back to the hotel." She said, instead of reciprocating his feelings. 

Mitch furrowed his brow and nodded, confused as to why she hadn't said it back to him. They climbed out of the water and headed back to their hotel. Willa closed the door to their suite behind her. She watched as Mitch left his coat on one of the chairs in the living room, and then walked into the bedroom part of the suite, pulling his black crew neck sweatshirt over his head as he went. She followed his lead, pulling her boots off of her feet by the door, placing her puffy maroon winter coat down on top of Mitch's. When she walked through the glass french doors dividing their suite in two, Willa saw Mitch sitting on the foot of the bed flipping through the guide book in his underwear. She smiled as she watched his large hand gruffly rubbing at his growing beard, as he read about which restaurant they should have dinner in that night. 

"Why are you naked?" She asked, leaning against the doorframe with her arms folded across her chest and a smirk across her face. 

Mitch looked up and saw her watching him. He lifted the book lightly and began to speak. "I was getting changed for dinner and then I realized that I didn't know where we were going or how I should dress so..." He contorted his mouth to the side, raised his eyebrows slightly, and then looked back at the pages in front of him. 

Suddenly, Mitch saw a hand pulling at the book, and he looked up to see Willa standing before him. She tossed the book on top of his open suitcase and then turned her attention back to him. She gently pushed her fingers into Mitch's chest and directed him onto his back on the bed. His hands instinctively found her hips, as he stared up at her face, curious about what was about to happen. Willa pulled her shirt off over her head, unclipped her bra, and then removed her pants and underwear. Mitch raised a single eyebrow, and couldn't help it as the corner of his mouth twitched up. He watched as she leaned down and began tugging on his boxer briefs. He gently lifted his hips and helped her to take them off. She threw them on top of her pile of clothes and then stood in between his legs. 

"Are we not going to dinner?" Mitch asked, a smirk resting on his face. 

Willa leaned down and hovered her face over his. "Did it bother you that I didn't say it back before we left the Lagoon?" She asked quietly. 

Mitch furrowed his brow, and stared at her hair, falling off of her back and around her face. He nodded slowly. "Yea... I was afraid that I had scared you.." Mitch lamented, refusing to make eye contact with her. 

Willa ran her hand up his chest and rested it against the side of his neck, connecting her thumb against his jaw. She stroked her finger through his growing facial hair and felt the warmth of his hand connect with the small of her back. "In that moment, all I wanted was to _show_ you how in love with you I am, Mitch Rapp... because I am _madly_ in love with you."

Willa felt Mitch's fingers curl into her skin, as he squeezed her tightly. A smile spread across his face again, and his free hand moved up, under her hair, and pulled her face towards his. He connected his lips with hers and let her words sink in. Mitch secured Willa against his body, and turned her onto her back. He continued kissing her as he ran his hands down her side, and wrapped her left thigh around his waist. He repeated the action with the right leg. He then hooked his hands under her back and neck and picked her gently up off the bed. He made his way towards the head of the mattress and gently placed her head against a pillow. Willa winced and quietly hissed as she landed on her left arm in an uncomfortable manner. 

"You okay?" Mitch asked, pausing from pulling the heavy sheets out from underneath their bodies.

Willa nodded and smiled, rubbing the bandaging on her arm. Mitch leaned down and gently kissed the brown wrapping, then rested against his forearms, hovering over Willa. He slowly pressed his lips against her neck, leaving wet kisses against her warm skin. Willa hummed quietly, and slid her fingers down Mitch's sides. He worked his mouth down her body, barely leaving an inch of skin untouched, then shot his head back up before letting his mouth go where she wanted it most.

He caught her hazel eyes in his, and maintained contact, as his hand softly brushed her skin. Mitch's middle finger grazed against Willa's opening, and she let out a barely audible gasp. "Tell me you love me." 

Willa let her hand drop to his hardening length and she stared straight into his eyes; she had said that she wanted to show him how much she loved him, not just say it, and now she would get to. She wrapped her fingers around Mitch's shaft, and saw his eyes flutter closed and felt his warm breath graze her bare skin. She began pumping her hand back and forth, feeling the precum dripping from his tip rub against her stomach.

She leaned up to whisper in his ear. "I love you." His hot exhale fanned her skin again.  

Mitch refocused his hands back up to Willa's face, grazing his thumbs against her flushed cheeks, and staring deeply into her eyes, as she began rubbing the head of his cock against her soaking wet cunt. "Tell me your in love with me." He plead, his eyes piercing into hers. 

Willa paused. She let out a heavy breath, then slowly moved Mitch's member in line with her opening. She carefully pulled him towards her, giving him silent instruction to slip inside. This was what she wanted all along. His staggered breath was silenced by the sound of her gasping for air over how he stretched her out. She waited for him to open his eyes again, and her hands hooked around the back of his neck, and his cheek. He very slowly moved in and out of her, the two of them quietly staring, as his length filled her. She felt complete. 

"I am in love with you. I am so in love with you, Mitch." Willa whispered. Mitch's brow furrowed, and wrinkles formed across his forehead at her declaration. He felt a tightness in his chest and a heaviness to his breath. He never thought he'd feel this way again, and now he was unsure that he ever actually felt this much in the first place. "Are you okay?" Her words pulled him from his overwhelming thoughts.

Mitch's expression softened, some of the wrinkles smoothing from his forehead. "Yea."

"You stopped..." Willa glanced down at his cock motionless, resting inside of her.

"Willa.." Mitch loved the way that her name felt in his mouth. Her eyebrows raised slightly, and her thumb swept across his cheekbone. "I only want you."

She smiled with her eyes, always surprised by what came out of his mouth. Mitch was unpredictable in the best ways sometimes. "I only want you." She echoed back his feelings.

A small wrinkle developed between his eyebrows, and he shook his head. " _Forever_." He paused, the tightness in his chest returning when he saw her truly smile. She looked relieved. "I am so in love with you. So fucking in love with you." 

Willa grinned, dropping her hands to hold his chiseled jaw, covered in wispy hairs, and she leaned up to connect her lips with his. It was warm and wet, but it was a simple kiss. "Then make love to me." She whispered, sending Mitch's brain into instinctual overdrive.

He crashed his lips back against hers, and his hips began to move again, thrusting in and out of her with a bit more force and speed than before. She hooked her ankles around the backs of his knees, keeping him in place as he left wet and sloppy kisses on her breasts. Willa arched her back up, wanting more of the feeling of his lips wrapped around her nipples, and Mitch obliged her. Her fingernails dug into the muscles on his biceps, and she squirmed underneath him. 

"Baby..." Willa whined quietly. Mitch popped his head up from her chest and quirked his eyebrows up, curious as to why she called for him. "Think you can flip me on top of you without hurting my arm or slipping out of me?" The most impish grin spread across Mitch's face, as he nodded, accepting her challenge. Willa squealed with glee, as Mitch wrapped his arms underneath her and smoothly did as she asked. "Relax." She cooed quietly, adjusting her legs to straddle him, and leaning forward to kiss and lick at the protruding vein on the side of his neck. She set a pace, alternating between riding Mitch's thick cock and grinding down against him, forcing him deep inside of her. 

Mitch whimpered every time she moved her hips in a figure eight motion while he was inside of her. He loved that she knew exactly how to get his head spinning. Her hands roamed and pawed at his exposed skin. Her mouth kissed, bit, licked and mumbled a mixture of sweet and dirty things in his ear. He didn't know what he did to deserve Willa; he'd never truly question it, but he was pretty sure that if he ever figured out what it was that he did, he would do it every single day just to keep her. 

"More..." A strained request fell from Willa's lips against the crook of Mitch's neck. 

"Lean back, gorgeous." He whispered into her ear, tucking a large section over her shoulder.

Willa rose with the most blissed out look on her face, light purple hickeys scattered across her chest from the night before. Mitch bent his knees behind her, slipped a couple of fingers in his mouth, and pressed them against her swollen and red clit. Willa gripped his thigh behind her, crashing down hard on his cock the moment his fingers touched her, and raked her nails across his stomach with her free hand. She felt her nerve endings begin to concentrate their sensitivity in her abdomen. Her jaw grew slack and she ceased her thrusts. Mitch was approaching his climax as well, so the loss of her movement was simply unacceptable to his brain. His hips bucked up out of instinct, making up for what her body could no longer do. A stuttering moan escape from her lips and her hands shook, searching for something to grab on to as her stomach spasmed. Every muscle in her body tightened, and Mitch breathed out a shaky exhale of his own, his eyes clenching shut, as her walls closed around his length. She grabbed at his fingers, no longer moving, but now simply pressed against her raw clit, and rested his hand against her thigh. She needed this to end, her head was spinning and she was completely overstimulated. 

"Please." She managed to mutter, her voice strained.

Mitch glanced up and saw her breasts bouncing with each forceful thrust, and her lip tucked tightly between her teeth. He smirked, pressed his finger against her clit, listened to her scream in pleasured pain and clench so tightly against him, that he finally came undone. Hot streams of cum filled Willa, who practically purred at the warm, throbbing, wonderful sensation. 

"Come here." Mitch reached for her wrists, and pulled her forward, resting her against his chest, while he twitched inside of her every once in a while, still coming down from his high. Their bodies rubbed against each other comfortably, as their breathing synced and Mitch massaged her sweaty back.

Willa, without looking, wiped the hair stuck to his damp forehead, and began running her delicate and shaky fingers through his long, brown locks. "Tell me you love me." She echoed his sentiment from earlier, but Willa's was less of a demand, and more of a request. She needed to hear the affirmation come from his voice. 

Mitch smiled, exhaling through his nose, causing Willa's hair to move slightly under the gentle breeze. "I love you. I love you. I love you." He whispered it over and over again, lips brushing against the shell of her ear repeatedly, as the words rolled off his tongue with ease. Nothing had ever come this easy to him before. Mitch thought he was predisposed to anger or guilt, but neither came as easy as this. Love, love, love. It was all he felt in that moment. His need to be attached to her forever, and the death-like ache that accompanied the thought of them not being together someday, kept him repeating those three words in her ear. "I love you. I love you. I love you." He whispered it, as he found her hand under the pillow. 

Mitch finally quieted down when Willa began humming in pure delight and pressing soft kisses against his clavicle. She shifted on top of him after a few more minutes and he knew she was growing uncomfortable. He pulled out and gently turned Willa over; careful to be mindful of her arm. He laid her flat against her stomach, and watched as she reached up and grabbed the pillow in front of her, tucking it under her head. 

She looked so drowsy and sweet and beautiful, and Mitch couldn't help himself. He always wanted to be touching her. He reached out, pushed her hair from off her neck, back onto the pillow around her head, and leaned over to kiss her arm and shoulder. Her soft purrs were intoxicating to Mitch. All he wanted was to keep hearing them, so he worked his lips slowly up her shoulder to her neck. He slid closer, drinking in the sound of her hums and groans, as he nibbled on her earlobe. He loved the languid and almost liquid way her body responded and moved under his kisses. She was constantly wiggling under his touch and it never failed to make him smirk. He slowly dragged his tongue down the length of her spine, her purrs growing louder. He left slow and wet, sucking kisses up her sides and against her ass and thighs, and he smirked when he saw her toes curl and her legs fidget. 

"You're killing me." She mumbled, and Mitch laughed, his hot breath hitting the small of her back. 

"Okay, okay." He relented.

Willa laid on her stomach, her cheek resting on the backs of her hands, which were laid flat against the mattress. Mitch collapsed next to her, his body slightly resting on top, and his breath hitting the skin on her cheek, as he rested his head on the bend of her arm. He stared at her adoringly, as his fingers gently traced the lines of her back. He watched her eyelids sleepily droop and he smiled. Every single thing that she did made him want to profess his devotion to her. She cut him off before he could even open his mouth.

"You know, the best feeling in the world is you fucking me. That's it, that's the best physical feeling in the whole world." 

Mitch snickered. " _Okay_.." 

"But the second best is just the feeling of you being inside of me." Mitch felt his dick twitch slightly against her side, and he raised his eyebrows, surprised by the liveliness of his friend immediately after he had just finished, but god damn, if Willa didn't coax it from him easily. His attention was directed back up to her as she continued rambling about her adoration for his cock. "You're just so fucking thick and long and you fill me up and stretch me out perfectly and it feels so incredible. Every time, it feels incredible." 

"What else do you love?" Mitch grinned, loving listening to her drowsy, ecstasy-filled ramblings about him. 

Willa kept her eyes closed, but her mouth twitched up in the corners slightly. "I love when you cum in me."

"Baby..." Mitch whispered, the breath taken out of his lungs by the time she finished her sentence, his fingers digging into the hot flesh on her back more. 

"Don't get me wrong," Willa's eyes fought to open, in order to look into Mitch's. "I love when you cum on me, or swallowing it, I basically just love making you cum." Mitch felt his length begin to throb slightly again, and he moved his hand, under the blanket, down to her ass, slowly kneading the bountiful flesh with his fingers.  "But there is something so primal about my desire to have you cum inside of me." Mitch's breath hitched in the back of his throat. He wanted to be inside of her, so he dropped his fingers down her ass, and slipped them into her dripping wet entrance. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes again at the feeling of him thrusting his fingers against her raw and abused pussy. The overstimulation was intense, but she was exhausted and it still felt so good. She continued. "It's probably something having to do with biology, if not for birth control, you coming in me would get me pregnant, and I do want your babies eventually, but I think it's more than just that."

"You've thought about this..." Mitch said, slight amusement in his voice.

Willa hummed in agreement. "I think about this every time you push inside of me, and then again every time you tell me you're about to cum." 

"So, what's 'more'?" He watched the outline of his arm moving under the white sheets, as he continued slipping his fingers in and out of her. 

"It's like whenever you shoot a load in me, you're basically marking me as your territory," Willa kept her eyes closed but smirked, breathing heavily out of her nose as Mitch moved his fingers from inside of her, down to her clit, rubbing back and forth against her throbbing nub. "and it's animalistic and sexy as fuck, and, and," Willa sighed. "I don't know. I just, whenever I feel a hot load filling me up, all I can think about it how you are showing that I am yours and no one else's." Mitch was quiet, continuing to rub against her clit, but Willa could only focus on his silence. "Is that weird?" She popped an eye open to look at him.

He had the biggest grin she had ever seen spread across his face; it made her smile. "That is the sexiest fucking thing you have ever said." Mitch told Willa, his fingers picking up their pace. "That's going to be all I think about now. Every time I shoot a load down your throat, or I rub one out and it lands on your chest or stomach, or every fucking time I cum into this perfect pussy of yours, I'm going to be claiming you as mine." Mitch's words were like ecstasy, he pressed harder and she whimpered. "Let it go, beautiful." Willa did. She unraveled, the shakes coming in waves, drowning in the sea of her own orgasm. Her body calmed and Mitch wiped his cum soaked fingers down the insides of her thighs. "Baby....?" Willa hummed without opening her eyes. Mitch pulled her hand from under her cheek, brought it down to her side, and wrapped it around his throbbing and hard length. Willa moaned happily. "I know you're tired...." 

"That was like my sixth orgasm today." She reminded him of their morning sex, how he went down on her in the shower, him fingering her in the Blue Lagoon, the two orgasms she had during sex before, and the one he had just given her. 

"I know, baby, so you can say no, but I'll do all of the work, I just want to-"

"Mark your territory, Mitch. Please." She smirked. 

"God, I love you." Mitch muttered, as he hurriedly straddled Willa's thighs, lined himself up, and buried his cock into her dripping wet and post-orgasm, tighter than usual pussy. 

* * *

Mitch and Willa took a shower, and skipped going out for dinner, instead ordering in room service, eating burgers and cheesecake in bed, and watching Icelandic news. Around eight, Willa woke up from her nap. Mitch was sitting up next to her, his fingers gently brushing through her long brown hair. She smiled, buried her nose deep into his bare muscular thigh, laying on the mattress next to her face, and left soft kisses. 

"Sleepyhead." He whispered, his fingers becoming a little firmer in their strokes through her hair. 

Willa sat up, pulling the covers up over her naked body; it didn't matter how high the heat was in their hotel room, Willa was always cold. "What are you reading?" She reached for the book in his hand, and smiled when he showed her the yellow cover. " _Film Photography for Dummies_?" She quirked an eyebrow up at him. 

"I bought a camera." Mitch replied, somewhat sheepishly.

"A film camera?" Willa questioned.

Mitch smiled and nodded. "A Nikon fm3a chrome 35mm camera."

"Can I see it?" Mitch nodded, and climbed out of bed. Willa licked her lips at his toned and muscular naked body. She loved his legs, they were hairy and masculine and long. He grabbed his fluffy, white bathrobe off the end of the bed and wrapped it around himself as he walked towards his backpack. "Why'd you buy a film camera? Why not just a digital?" She asked. 

Mitch pulled the lens cap off the front and played around with the focus. "You know I don't like carrying a phone around, even with a ghost chip, I just, they're too easily tapped into." Willa nodded, as this was not the first time they had had this conversation, and it took a full two days for Irene to convince him to even take his government issued phone home with him. But he kept it in a lead box in the cupboard under the sink of the guest bathroom downstairs. "I also don't love the idea of having digital pictures of us."

"Feel like one day that's going to come back and bite us in the ass?" 

Mitch bobbed his head left and right, and messed around with the exposure on his camera. "I would never want anyone to hack a computer or a phone, find a picture of us being romantic, realize you're my weakness and hurt you." Willa allowed a smug grin to spread across her face and Mitch knew exactly what she was thinking. "And yes, you are my weakness. Don't be cocky. You already knew that."

Willa blushed, and covered her mouth with her hand, trying to hide her smirk. Arrogance would frustrate Mitch and he would clam up, but she loved how expressive he was being that day. So, modesty was key, even if they both knew it was fake. She cleared her throat and tried to compose her expression. "So no pictures? At all?"

"Well, that was the point of the film camera. I want to document our life together. I want pictures of us on trips like this, or just of us in general, but I want to be able to lock them in the safe and know that no one but you and I can get to them."

Willa smiled more genuinely this time, the pink blush never leaving her cheeks. He was subtle in how unbelievably thoughtful and romantic he was. She loved him so much. He was, deep down, a giant softy. "Have you used it much yet?" Mitch shook his head. "Alright, so test it out on me. Right now. Come on, fix your... _aperture_ or whatever it is." She sat up a little straighter in bed, ran her fingers through her dark brown hair, and pulled the sheets up to underneath her chin. 

Mitch licked his lips and smiled. She was the most beautiful creature on earth. It didn't matter what beautiful and exotic places they would travel to, Willa would always be Mitch's favorite subject. He pushed his left knee against the edge of the foot of the bed, and framed Willa up. The television had been playing silently in the background, and there was minimal lighting beside its glow, but when Mitch released the shutter, the split second he got was Willa, soft and white from the bedsheets, with her skin and eyes illuminated by the glow from the TV behind him. He lowered the camera from in front of his face and smiled. "I have a feeling that if that actually comes out when it gets developed, that will be my favorite shot of you ever." 

Willa dropped the sheets, leaned forward, grabbing Mitch by the collars of his bathrobe, and pulled him back on to the bed with her. He scooted up next to her, and rested against the crook of her neck. She grabbed the camera from his hands, turned it around and went to aim, then decided to hand it back. "I have no idea what I'm doing. You do it."

Mitch chuckled, and tried to adjust the focus to the best of his ability for a selfie of the two of them. Right before his pointer finger pressed down on the release, Willa leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. Mitch grinned and the shutter snapped. "That definitely didn't actually come out correctly." He snickered. 

"We'll know what it was." Willa whispered before leaving a quick peck on his crown, and then scooting out from under the covers. Mitch snapped a quick shot of Willa before she could get her bathrobe on, and her scolding him was only met with his rupturous laughter. Willa used the restroom, then popped her head back out in to their bedroom. "Are you tired?"

Mitch contemplated for a moment, then shook his head. "Are you?"

"That nap kind of woke me up." She sent him a lopsided smirk. "It's almost nine, the sun is up for about three more hours. There was this lighthouse in the guidebook that's like a two hour drive from here. We could make it for sunset."

Mitch smiled. "Get dressed, woman."

* * *

Mitch hung back by the car, leaning against the hood, as Willa began walking towards the small, tan lighthouse on the cliff. The wind whipped cool air around them but it was close to eleven at night, and the sun was only finally setting and they did not want to waste the opportunity. Mitch looked up and saw the pink and purple fluffy clouds settling on the horizon behind Dyrholaey Lighthouse, with its red roof, and he smiled at the perfect picture opportunity. He adjusted the focus and the exposure and snapped a few candids of Willa walking towards the edge of the cliff. He settled the camera back around his neck, and then reached into his coat pocket to finger the soft velvet box. 

" _ **MITCH**_!" Willa yelled off in the distance. All he saw was the wind gently moving the hair in her ponytail, and her pearly whites popping against her heavy maroon coat. He smiled and ran after her. "This is the most beautiful thing I think I have ever seen." She said, as he caught up and wrapped his bare fingers around her wool mittens. 

Mitch pulled her bundled up hand up to his lips and pressed his mouth against the scratchy fabric. "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen; this is a very close second though."

He smiled because she smiled and giggled, and he felt butterflies fill his stomach. He never thought he would be this happy again after everything he had been through. He was unsure if he had every actually been as happy as he was in that moment. Willa never let him get too lost in his thoughts. Before he knew it, she was dragging him up the winding stairs to the top of the lighthouse, and Mitch was happily following. She sauntered over to the edge of the tan brick ledge, and leaned her torso against it, staring out at the vast landscape, made to look like a beautiful Manet or Van Gogh because of the sun setting against the ice blue water and black sand beaches below. Willa turned her head to the side to look behind her as she felt Mitch press his body against hers. 

She looked in front of her when she saw Mitch's hand move away from the ledge, leaving a small black jewelry box behind. "What's this?" She asked with a smirk, as she pulled her black mittens off of her hands and stuffed them into her coat pocket.

"Open it." Mitch insisted, resting his chin against her shoulder. Willa did as Mitch said, and she opened the box. "Happy belated birthday, Wilhelmina Hurley." Mitch whispered in her ear, as the box revealed a thin and delicate silver chain with a tiny diamond weighing down the middle. 

"Mitch.." She whispered only loud enough for him to hear. She began to turn around when suddenly Mitch's hands on her hips kept her in place. 

"No, no, no." He quickly muttered. "Do you like it?"

"I love it so much. I don't even know what to say. I love it so much. Mitch, you shouldn't have." She rambled, getting choked up on her words. 

Mitch leaned over and pulled the box from her hands, gently tugged the chain from the thick cushioning inside, and unclasped it. He brought his hands around Willa's front and positioned the necklace around her neck. "You made this easy for me tonight by putting your hair up." Mitch commented, quietly laughing as he struggled to clasp the necklace with his cold and tingly fingers. Willa turned her head and smiled, holding her hair even higher off of her neck with her hand. Finally, Mitch secured the chain and Willa turned to look at him, as he pocketed the box once more. 

"How does it look?" She asked, beaming from ear to ear as she lifted her chin and moved her head left and right, showing off the present to Mitch, her fingers lightly touching the upper part of the chain.

"It's perfect." Mitch smiled, and wrapped his hands around her waist. "I wanted something kind of nondescript and simple, so that you could still wear it on missions and it wouldn't draw attention or anything." He explained, pulling one of his hands up to her neck to thumb the small stone dangling from the chain. 

"I love it so much. I love you so much. It really is perfect. I'm never taking it off." She placed her hand on top of his, then leaned up to connect her lips with his. "The best birthday present I've ever gotten." She whispered.

Mitch smiled and pressed his face against her cheek. They swayed with the wind in each others arms for a few minutes, until Mitch opened his eyes and looked up. "Oh wow.. hey, stay right there. Just like that." He stepped back, pulled the camera out of the pocket of his dark blue coat, and pulled the cap off of the lens. He adjusted the exposure, trying to get both Willa and the sunset to come through in the finished product. He snapped several, making sure he'd at least get one good shot. He fished the cap out of his pocket, covered it back up and dropped the camera back on top of his gloves. "Come here..." Mitch looked around, took Willa's hand in his, and walked over to one of the corners of the ledge. He lowered himself on to the ground and pulled Willa down to sit between his legs. She leaned her back against his chest and he wrapped his hands around her. "I love you too, by the way." Mitch whispered, as he placed a quick peck on her cheek and then rested his head back against the ledge wall. The two of them sat on the ground on the top of the lighthouse watching the late sun set over all of Iceland. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Mitch wrote that inscription after like two and a half months. I have the flashback as something like Day 109, right after they finally got back from Rome, which makes it three and a half months of them knowing each other and being together, and also makes it almost June. :) chugging along.... really, this note is for me so i don't lose track of the timeline.


	34. Day 133

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa move in together the day after they return from Iceland. Beth comes over to help unpack, and Willa explains what happened in Rome. Finally, Mitch finds Willa secretly on her laptop while he sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The difference between revenge and retribution is slim. Revenge is dishing out a personal punishment for personal gain without any sanctioning. Retribution is a punishment mandated by the law. It's hard to tell if Mitch truly believes in justice in the "American way" or if he's using it as an excuse, but *shrugs* c'est la vie.

Willa paused in her story when the door to hers and Mitch's bedroom creaked open. Her and Beth looked up and saw Mitch waiting with a cardboard moving box in his arms. Willa smiled softly and Mitch took that as his invitation into the room. He tapped the door behind him with his foot, until it was just barely still ajar, and placed the box from his storage next to Willa's boxes from The Barn, listening as she continued telling her story. 

"Irene told me that, um, she didn't know about Brandon until about a month after he had already been down at The Barn, and she wanted to... She didn't know what to do. It wasn't her family, Stan wasn't really breaking any laws... she just didn't do anything, which I don't know how to feel about her part in all of this. It's kind of fucked up that she never told me when I was older, but I don't know..."

Willa glanced at Mitch as he began to leave the room, and she gave him a sad, but longing stare. He paused, furrowing his brow, upset that Willa was constantly forcing herself to relive this experience; he knew it consumed her thoughts. He walked back into the room and sat in the cream colored chair in the corner, confident that her frown meant that she wanted him to stay. 

Beth glanced over at Willa, and then back at Mitch. "I'm so sorry, to the both of you. You two almost died because my Dad created a monster."

Mitch shook his head. "Don't apologize to me, Beth. What happened in Rome was part of my job." Mitch shrugged, then tugged on his beard for a moment. "He really didn't even do anything to me anyway."

"Those cuts beg to differ, Mitch." Beth pointed to the scrapes on his face and arms. "And honestly, I'm sorry either way. I just can't believe he kept something like this a secret from all of us for so long.... And he almost got away with it too." Beth paused, staring at her hands, and trying to choke back guilty tears. She hadn't done anything, but she felt responsible for her father's actions. "I wish I could apologize to Brandon." She muttered, barely glancing up at Willa. 

Willa shrugged. "I don't know that at this point, it would have made a difference. He just _looked_ like my brother..... but my Brandon, my B, he... that wasn't him."

" _ **MITCH**_!" Steven yelled from the hallway. Mitch sighed, rolled his eyes, and began to get out of his chair. " _ **MITCH, THIS THING IS HEAVY. I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO HELP**_!" 

"I told him to leave the punching bag downstairs." Mitch shook his head.

Beth put her hand out, signaling for Mitch to stay. "I'll help him. I'm sure between the two of us we can get it in there." Beth walked out to help Steven bring Mitch's old _Everlast_ punching bag, from his old Syracuse apartment, into what used to be Brandon's room, but was being repurposed into their own private gym.

Willa glanced behind her, softly smiling at Mitch with her eyes. He climbed onto the bed and let her collapse across his stomach. She scrunched the fabric on his sweaty shirt up around his chest, and he propped his left arm under his head, so he could see his fingers running through her tresses. "I'm glad you're moving in." She whispered, staring up at him. 

Mitch smiled, and rolled his lips back into his mouth. "I am too. I was kind of worried you weren't going to ask me, and I was going to have to slowly move things in, one by one, so it would take you a while to notice, and then at that point it'd be more effort than it was worth to kick me out."

"Oh, you were going to trick your way in here?" Mitch nodded, a lighthearted smirk on his lips. " _Of course_ , I was going to ask you." Willa clarified for him. "I was actually worried that you were going to think it was too soon, though."

"For normal twenty-five year olds? Yes. _For us_?" Mitch scrunched his face, and shook his head.

"Are you implying that we are not _normal_ twenty-five year olds?" Willa teased, eliciting an eye roll and a grin from Mitch. 

" _Yes_."

Willa reached up and ran her fingers through Mitch's growing beard. "Well, I guess we couldn't be normal, since I'm dating  _Sasquatch_  now."

Mitch pouted and pulled at his beard. "Do you not like it?"

Willa bit her bottom lip and smiled. "I'm just teasing."

"Oh, I got a lip bite? You _do_ like it." Mitch grinned.

Willa climbed up Mitch's body a little more, licked her lips, and pressed them slowly and softly against Mitch's. She slipped her tongue into his mouth and gently massaged his. She pulled away and felt his chest fall heavily as he exhaled deeply, not wanting the connection to end. "I _love_ it actually. Every time I see it, I kind of want to ride it until I cum." Willa cocked her head to the side and smiled innocently. 

Mitch snickered, and licked his lips a few times. "Oh _fuck_ _you_. Why do you _always_ do this when we have people over?" He shook his head, and dipped his muscular hands under the waist band of Willa's leggings, grabbing fistfuls of her ass, and dragging her up against his body so that he could kiss her again. 

"I do it so that it drives you crazy, and it's _all_ you can think about _all_ day, and then you make me cum, like, _six_ times in one night. Usually, teasing you _really_ works in my favor."

Mitch grinned, and bobbed his head. He hated that she would get her way, but he couldn't help himself. She got in his head and now all he _could_ think about was her riding his face, her juices mixed into his beard, and her sweet taste on his tongue. He left a long, deep and passionate kiss on her lips. " _Seven_ times tonight. We'll see who walks around here tortured all day." He pushed his hand farther down her pants, and brushed her wet entrance with his fingers. Willa exhaled sharply and shook her head. 

"Hate you." She whispered, grinning. 

Mitch quirked his eyebrows up and mirrored her expression. " _Love you_." He turned her over, swiftly pulling his hands from her body, and dropping her softly against the mattress. "Now get off and think about _seven_ _times_." He held up seven fingers in front of him, then turned and walked out of the room, just missing Willa launching a pillow at the door behind him.

* * *

Mitch woke up. He was abnormally cold, even though the sheet was fully covering him. Something was missing. He turned over to see Willa's side of the bed empty, and he understood why the bed wasn't as warm as it usually was. He moved his hand over the fitted sheet towards where her body was supposed to be, smoothing out the empty wrinkles, then glanced at the clock. It read thirty-eight minutes after ten. He had crashed hard after moving boxes all day. When he fell asleep, however, Willa had been sitting up, reading in bed next to him. He yawned and stretched his limbs, then pulled the sheet off of him, and climbed out of the low to the ground bed. Mitch grabbed his gray sweats off the floor and went in search of his girlfriend. 

His large feet made a clinking sound against the metal of the spiral staircase, as he descended it to go to the first floor of the two-story penthouse. He saw a soft glow coming from Willa's father's old office, and he walked towards it. He knocked softly on the doorframe and watched as her head turned to greet him with a smile. 

"Why aren't you asleep, baby?" She asked, lowering the lid to her _MacBook_ slightly, the room now more illuminated by the soft, murky glow from the desk lamp with the green glass cover. 

Mitch sat in the white suede club chair next to the door, and Willa walked over to sit in his lap. She curled up, her legs resting against his chest and her arms wrapped around his neck, and settled on top of his strong thighs. Mitch held her whole body in his arms and rested his cheek against her knee, staring up at her. "I woke up and you weren't there. I'm sorry I fell asleep so early. Some exciting first night living together, huh?" Mitch gave her a lopsided smile and snickered, his breath grazing the skin of her bare legs. 

Willa smiled and shook her head. "You are allowed to be tired, Mitch, and besides, I have a whole lifetime full of exciting nights with you. You can sleep early this once." She reassured him, running her fingers through the hair on the side of his head. He shut his eyes and melted into her touch. 

He went back to wondering why she was no longer in bed with him when he woke up. "What did I interrupt?" 

" _Um_.." Willa paused.

"Did I _actually_ interrupt something?" Mitch opened his eyes and lifted his head. Suddenly doubt and concern began to creep into his mind that Willa was hiding something; creeping around their apartment in the middle of the night while he slept. He tried to dampen the thoughts, but his penchant for paranoia was difficult to ignore.

"No, not really. I was, um.." Willa sighed and climbed off Mitch's lap. She closed the laptop fully, grabbed it off of the desk, switched off the light, and turned to Mitch, holding her free hand out for him to take. "Come on." Mitch complied and followed Willa out to the living room. She switched on a different lamp and sat on the couch next to Mitch. She opened the laptop back up and entered the password. "I've been following financials for Mansur and the Bahji."

Mitch snorted, and the right side of his mouth twitched up into a smile. That was not what he was expecting her to say at all, and he was moved that she was downstairs, working to get him info on the terrorist group, while he laid upstairs peacefully sleeping. "I love you." He smiled, shaking his head, and planting a kiss on her cheek, lingering for a minute to nuzzle the tip of his nose into her hairline. 

Willa grinned and wrapped her left hand around the inside of his thigh, tucking her fingers under his leg. Mitch ran his hands up and down her arm as she began to explain what she had been doing. "Mansur is a surprisingly tricky fucker. But I managed to build a blueprint on the financials of his family members. At first, I couldn't find much activity that was suspicious. I mean, like most of his family is part of the Bahji, so all of it is dirty money in some way. But his mother isn't, yet she is living a swanky fucking life in Muskat."

"Oman?" Mitch asked, surprised to hear that she was not in Lebanon, where Mansur had been reportedly living for the past decade and where he had previously built up the terror cell. 

"Yea, and so I started hacking into the aliases and shell companies that we already knew about for him and his family members," Willa paused and turned to look at Mitch. "and I found a new one."

"Seriously? Are you sure it's him?"

"I'm positive. I've been working with this NSA analyst, this woman who used to be at The Barn when I would train there in the summers in high school. She was so good at the tech shit that she got recruited from the CIA to the NSA.. I trust her, and she's been incredibly helpful."

"And you two found a new shell corporation or alias or what?" Mitch asked, surprised by all of the new revelations and all of the work that Willa had been putting in on his behalf.

She nodded, and felt him lay a few soft kisses on her shoulder. She turned, a smile on her face, and Mitch placed a soft kiss on her cheek again. She licked her lips slightly, and turned back to her computer, trying to focus on Mansur and not Mitch's affectionate behavior. "So, we hadn't found this one because it's most well set up company of all of them. It's a _real_ shipping company, but Mitch, it's so obvious when you begin to piece it all together."

"Why? What is it?"

"You said you didn't know _A TON_ about Mansur. You thought that the name was fake, that Adnan was his real first name, but al-Mansur was the founder of the Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad, and you just assumed it was an alias, or an adopted name, right?" Mitch nodded. "But what if it's not?"

"You think Mansur is his real name and this guy was dumb enough to never use an alias?" Mitch questioned, overly surprised. 

"Yes, I really think he's that dumb, or maybe he rose through the ranks too quickly and he was just known by his real name, I don't know what the case is, but the money from Yemen, that is being deposited by the new shell company, into his mother's bank account in Oman, is from Aden."

"Where'd Yemen come from in all of this? I'm confused. I don't know Yemen that well, Will. You're gonna have to explain this to me." Mitch furrowed his brow and stared at his nerd of a girlfriend. 

Willa smiled, all of her Middle East studies in college were paying off. "Okay, so Yemen has been in the middle of a nasty civil war for a while now, right?" Mitch nodded, having heard about that in the news in passing over the years. "Sana'a is the traditional capital of Yemen, it's more northwest, by the Red Sea and the Saudi Arabian border, but it's been under rebel control for at least two years now, so the Yemeni government moved the capital, temporarily, to the city of Aden." Willa pulled up a new tab on Google Chrome and opened a map of Yemen. It showed Aden as being on the Southwest coast, due north of Somalia and on the shores of the Gulf of Aden. She opened a map of the city of Aden on Google Images, and pointed to a specific neighborhood in the port city. 

" _Al Mansoura_." Mitch spoke out loud, his eyes growing wide, as he turned to look at Willa. "Oh, baby, what the fuck did you just find?"

Willa grinned. "I think this is where Mansur is from. _al-Mansur_ , it's not uncommon for the surname to be the town or area of where you were born in the Middle East."

Mitch nodded. "Okay, I agree, he could be from Yemen, but I don't get how this helps you find him or what Yemen... How does his mother fit into this?" Mitch was still confused.

"Right, well, some of the intel that the CIA actually has on Mansur is that he calls his mom, like, a weird amount for a grown man."

Mitch laughed. "I knew this already."

Willa nodded. "But he does it from burners and payphones and phonebanks, and we can never track him, right?" Mitch nodded. He had read Mansur's file cover to cover many times since joining Orion. "We assume that he takes care of her financially, but we weren't sure how because the shell companies were always dead ends. They never deposited money into her accounts. The new one, the legitimate shipping company, is called ' _Sahili Shipping_ '. It means 'coastal' in Arabic. It wasn't a dead end. The money is coming out of Aden, out of Sahili, and going directly into her bank account in Muskat."

"They aren't laundering it through other banks first?" Mitch asked, surprised. 

Willa shook her head, and pulled the financial records up again, before handing Mitch the computer and letting him scroll through her findings himself. "No, that would be suspicious, and because this is a legitimate, profitable company, they're trying not to raise any red flags by running the money through banks in Cyprus or Saudi Arabia or something." Mitch hummed, letting Willa know he was still listening, while he sifted through the bank statements and transactions. "There is zero reason why this woman should be getting money from this company that only started a few years ago. She's like seventy-five and she doesn't work for them. She shouldn't be on their payroll. Yet, she's getting a shit ton of wire transfers from it. It has to be Mansur's company."

"You're definitely right. The numbers match up to what he usually sends her." Mitch tugged on his growing beard as he scrolled through the data. 

"I know that it's just money, and it doesn't mean that we found him, by any means. I know that. But, he's been.. the Bahji have been so quiet out of Lebanon, since those last two drone strikes, that part of me wonders if they didn't move their operation south to a place where Mansur is comfortable and is surrounded by people he trusts... Somewhere he feels safe, and at home..."

"You think he could be in Aden?" Mitch asked, pulling up the map of Yemen once more on Willa's laptop. 

"Maybe. It's just a theory that I've been working on."

"It's more than we had before. Willa, when did you even find the time to do this?" Mitch asked, peeling his amber eyes off the screen, and settling them on her perfect face. He set the computer aside, wrapped his hand around her legs, and pulled her tight against his side. 

"It's what I was doing during the Arabic seminars since we got back from Spring Break.. and when I had some free time in Iceland because I hadn't adjusted to the time change."

Mitch snickered. He was constantly in awe of what remarkable of a woman Willa proved to be on a daily basis. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to get you excited and then have it turn out to be a dead end. I wanted something definitive to bring to you, and this is really only a lead. It's just somewhere to start looking, and it may prove to be nothing at all."

"Baby, I can help though. I know Mansur. I know the Bajhi. I infiltrated them before Irene picked me up. I almost killed him." Mitch finally placed the laptop on the coffee table in front of the couch, and then pulled Willa even closer, cupping her cheeks in his hands, as he smiled at her.

"I know, I just..." Willa sighed, then placed her forehead against Mitch's chest, somewhat exasperated. "Irene was right to pull you out. I read the report, and Mitch, you are the best of the best, _truly_ , but that was a suicide mission. You would not have made it out of there alive if Irene hadn't swooped in with the Seal Team." Mitch went to begin to argue, but Willa lifted her head, connected her eyes with his again, and cut him off before he could even start. "I didn't want you running off to do this alone again. You aren't alone anymore. You have me. Let me help."

Mitch couldn't help but smile. He nodded and pressed his lips against Willa's. " _Okay_. I promise we do this together."

She sent him a lopsided smile, that slowly turned into a hesitant frown. "Um, can I ask you a question?" Mitch nodded, and began to mirror her concerned expression. "What are you going to do once you kill Mansur?"

"What do you mean?" Mitch leaned back against the couch cushions a little, separating himself from Willa. 

"I mean," She sighed. "I heard that conversation between you and Stan in Rome. I know you know I heard it."

"Which one, Will?"

"The one about revenge and why you're doing all of this."

" _Oh_... You want to know if I'm going to let go of Katrina after I kill Mansur?" Mitch's voice dropped an octave. He was a little defensive because of this topic.

Willa shook her head. " _No_!" She raised her voice, not a yell, just a higher pitch. "No, that's, that's not what I mean. I don't expect you to let her go, and that's not what I want or need here. I'm never going to let go of what happened to my parents, so I don't expect you to do that either. That sort of trauma doesn't just go away."

"So what _are_ you asking?"

"I'm asking what you're going to be doing all of this for?" She scrunched her face and narrowed her eyes at him. This question had been nagging her for weeks. "This mission... this kill, it's why you got involved in the training and the... all of it, becoming who you are right now in this moment, _all_ to kill Mansur, and I just don't know what happens after you've done it."

Mitch softened. He understood where Willa was coming from. "I've thought about it some, but I haven't put _that_ much thought towards it, to be honest."

She cleared her throat and stared down at her hands, trying to figure out how to properly articulate her next sentence. "You and... _Ghost_..." Willa still refused to call him by any other name. "You're kind of similar in that you had these horribly traumatic things happen to you at young ages and you lost your families, and then traumatic things just _kept_ happening. You heard Stan's story. Ghost tried to go after Usama bin Laden, and when he couldn't get that revenge for... _my_ parents, when he couldn't be the one to kill the person who killed his loved ones, he lost it." Mitch nodded. "I just don't want you to lose your purpose in life once you've exacted this revenge. That's all."

"I get what you mean, and I don't know if it is even about revenge anymore. Before, well before it definitely was, but now that I have Orion and the CIA and the government backing me, and sanctioning this hit, it feels more like _retribution_." Willa nodded silently. She wasn't sure that there was a drastic difference between the two. Mitch exhaled a deep breath and stretched. "I'm gonna head back up to bed, you coming?"

Willa sent him a halfhearted smile and shook her head. "I think I'm going to dig a little more. I was on a specific search and I just want to see it through to the end before I call it a night. I'll be up in a bit." 

"Okay, night, baby." Mitch left a kiss on her cheek and headed back upstairs.

* * *

About twenty minutes to midnight, Willa called it quits and headed upstairs to bed. She quietly and slowly turned the knob on their bedroom door and pulled up onto her tip-toes as to not wake Mitch, until she saw the light on above his side of the bed. She had the look of happy confusion on her face when she saw him with one arm resting behind his head, the other resting over his stomach, and a blank stare up at the ceiling above him. He glanced back when he heard her come in and smiled. 

"I couldn't sleep."

She closed the door behind her, set her laptop down on the table next to the door and walked to the middle of the room where the bed sat. "Everything okay?"

Mitch readjusted himself on the pillows as Willa undid her hair from her top bun and sat on top of the sheets next to him, rubbing her fingers against her scalp. He moved his hand from over his torso to rest over her thigh, massaging his thumb into her smooth but muscular leg. "I was thinking about the mission in Rome, and I didn't do that for any reason other than it was my assignment."

"Right?" Willa wiped off the minimal makeup she had on earlier in the day with the makeup remover wipes she kept next to her side of the bed, and Mitch watched her with a drowsy smile. 

"You were right before. I need to find a reason to keep doing this once I kill Mansur. I was laying here thinking about killing Sharif in Istanbul.. He contributed in a huge way to killing Katrina and all of those people on that beach, but killing him only felt good for a minute, and then it still didn't stop her from dying, you know?" Mitch paused, and Willa nodded. "I like this line of work, I think I'm good at it."

She chimed in. "You're the best I've seen come through The Barn in three years, M. You are _disturbingly_ good at it."

Mitch smirked at her unique praise. "I get worried that letting go of Katrina, killing Mansur, all of that will make me lose my edge, that it will make me less angry or willing to get the job done." He paused. "But I don't think, you were talking about trauma, and you were right. A lot has happened to me, and all of those events will stay with me, they will continue motivating me, but they don't need to be my only motivation anymore. It felt good to save all of those people, millions of people, and yea, it will feel good to end Mansur, and part of that will be because I will be getting justice for Katrina, but part of it will feel so good to know that no one else will ever get hurt because of a scumbag like Mansur ever again. No man will lose his fianceé again, no mother and father will lose their daughter again, no seventeen year old girl will lose her older sister again, at least not by Mansur's hands."

"You want to keep people safe." Willa scooted closer to Mitch, who nodded, while moving his hand up her thigh to rest on her side. 

"I want to keep you safe, and Steve, and Beth and Irene, and Perry, and the Pakistani guy who gave me extra white sauce on my halal the other night over on Fulton Street." Willa laughed, but felt warm. Mitch had finally found his motivation for his new life mission. "And I want to put Katrina behind me."

"Mitch..." She felt like he was only saying that to make her feel better, and she didn't need it. She was fine with him still loving her. 

Mitch shook his head and pulled Willa closer to him. She snuggled up against his side, finally getting under the blankets with him. He wrapped his arm around Willa's shoulders, held her tight, and spoke against her forehead. "I mean it. I loved her. A lot. That will always be a part of me, but I feel like I'm living with this needless guilt for moving on and falling in love with you, and I don't want that. I want to do right by her, and then I want to get on with my life..." Mitch paused and looked down, connecting his eyes with Willa's hazel ones. "I want to move on with you. You're my future, Will."

Willa leaned up and kissed Mitch on the lips lightly, before retreating with a smile. "Then let's go get 'em." Willa said, referring to Mansur and the Bahji.

Mitch smiled and snickered. "Alright, tiger. Let's just go to bed first, huh?" He said, as he reached up to turn off his lamp, and then held Willa until they both fell asleep.


	35. Day 152

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irene calls in a favor from Mitch and Willa, ultimately sending them on assignment up to Montreal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I suppose this should have some warnings for like non-consensual sexual content? Like, sort of... I mean, she didn't want any of it (well she wanted the parts with Mitch) but she was also egging him on and in control of the situation, and she could clearly stop it any time when she wanted, but I feel like the warning should happen anyway. Just in case. 
> 
> I thought this was just a chapter that showed off a new dynamic between Mitch and Willa, and also showed what Willa was willing to do to get the job done....

Mitch laid on the couch in the living room, his feet propped up on a mountain of pillows, and Viktor Frankl's _Man's Search For Meaning_ dangling over his face. He grimaced over the graphic depictions of terror and mistreatment of innocent humans that he was reading about in the book. After their conversation about revenge versus retribution, and what Mitch would fight for after Mansur was slain, Willa had suggested he read the book. She said that it always reminded her of why she got involved, and stay involved in their line of work. He understood why that was as soon as he began reading it. 

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and he smiled softly, as he saw Willa come out of her father's office. "What do you have there?" He asked, staring at the item in her hands. She simply smiled and leaned over the table against the wall where the record player sat. Static was followed by the sounds of brass horns filling the room. Willa sauntered over to Mitch, with a massive grin on her face, and left her hand out for him to take. Mitch shook his head and chuckled, but put down his book on the back of the couch and placed his hand in hers anyway. She hoisted him off of the couch and they walked over to an open space in the living room. 

_"Cause you make me feel so brand new. I want to spend my life with you. The same things, baby, since we've been together, loving you forever..."_

Al Green's classic song, " _Let's Stay Together_ " began playing and Mitch smiled down at the woman he loved. He wrapped her hands up around his neck and then wrapped his arms around her waist and they began swaying in unison around the living room. Mitch lifted Willa off of the hardwood floors and placed her feet on the tops of his, and began to dance around the room with her on top of him. She laughed and smiled and left occasional kisses on his lips, and Mitch understood that _this_ was the purest kind of bliss. 

 _"Let's, we ought to stay together. Loving you whether, whether times are good or bad, happy or sad."_ Willa whisper-sung to Mitch and Mitch joined in.

 _"Let's, LET'S STAY TOGETHER!"_ Mitch scream-sung to Willa and she crumbled into a fit of laughter, as the song neared its end. He chuckled and then waited for her to calm down before he spoke again. "I could listen to you sing to me or laugh at me for the rest of my life." Mitch smiled down at Willa. 

"So let's stay together then?" Willa joked with a smirk on her face. 

"Yea, _okay_ , but _not_ because of that joke." Mitch snickered and shook his head, then leaned down for a kiss. Willa pressed her lips against his and they swayed to the fading music, until a loud ringing from Willa's cellphone overtook the sound of the music playing. They tried to ignore it, until Mitch's phone began ringing as well. Mitch sighed and watched as Willa stepped off of his feet to ran towards the counter where their phones sat. She tossed Mitch his, which he caught, and walked towards her. 

"Yea, I'll hold." Mitch shook his head and huffed. 

"Yes, Ma'am, he's here with me." Willa said into her phone, looking at Mitch, and grabbing him by the front of his shirt, pulling him towards her. She pressed her body against his and slid her fingers up against his abdomen under the soft cotton of his t-shirt. "Yes, Ma'am." Willa said, pulling the phone from her ear, pressing the button for the speakerphone and placing it on the counter in front of her. She turned to lean against the cold countertop, and Mitch positioned himself behind her, wrapping his free hand around her stomach, and pressing his body hard against hers. He kissed softly and quietly down the side of her neck, and Willa rolled her head to the side, closing her eyes and enjoying the intimate and dangerous moment.

" _You can hang up, Mitch. They're keeping you on hold for me in case you two weren't together_."

"Yes, Ma'am." Mitch said, resting his bearded chin against Willa's shoulder, and pressing the ' _end call_ ' button on his phone before tossing it on the counter. "What's going on, Director?" Mitch asked, rubbing his hands under Willa's shirt and feeling her wiggle against his touch. 

" _I know I said that the two of you had time off until we could secure your in with the Bahji terror group, but I am calling for a favor that you don't owe me._ " Irene said into the secure line. 

"What's the mission, Irene?" Willa asked, trying to focus on her boss's voice and not Mitch's touch.

" _It's one night. I have an operative already up there that has done all of the leg work for you. But Willa, I need you to be the honeypot. This guy is a pig and since you are a woman, you are just his type_." 

Willa turned and glanced at Mitch. He raised his eyebrows briefly and nodded unconvincingly. "Where?"

" _Montreal, tonight. There will be two tickets for you at JFK in three hours. Pack for a high class fundraiser_."

"What's the event?" Willa asked. 

" _The Russian ballet is in town. You will go to the opening night, and then the after party back at your hotel_." 

"What's the code?" Mitch asked, inquiring as to who they should check in as at the hotel in order to meet their operative. 

" _The limo at the airport and conceirge will be looking for a Mr. and Mrs. Mortimor, and the ground op will be Morgan_."

"Alright, Irene. We'll be there." Willa said as she disconnected the call. "Red or black?" She cocked her head to the side and asked Mitch. 

Mitch licked the bottom of his left canine and shook his head. "Red." 

* * *

Mitch knocked on the door to the room next to his and waited. "Mr. Morgan?" Mitch asked and the man nodded, then stepped out of the way, allowing Mitch to enter his hotel room. Mitch walked right past him and went to open the adjoining door for his and Willa's room. The ground operative followed Mitch into their room and saw Willa wearing a royal blue wrap dress with a high slit up the front and a plunging neckline. She stopped combing out the bright auburn colored wig and set it on the desk. 

"Agent Hurley, nice to meet you." She stuck her hand out to shake his and he accepted, trying very hard not to stare at Willa's ample cleavage. Mitch snickered in the corner, garnering the ground operatives attention. 

"Rapp." Mitch barely introduced himself before pursing his lips and nodding his head once. 

"Good to meet you both, I'm Special Technical Agent Elliot Polansky, and I am really grateful for the help. This guy has been evading us for months. They were going to bring in a whole team for this, as soon as we got the confirmation that he'd be here, but the Director recommended the two of you." The ground operative finally made his own introduction.

"Who's the target?" Mitch asked, as Elliot invited them into his hotel room.

Agent Polansky pulled up a picture of an Eastern European looking man, who's poorly taken care of teeth and huge ears made him quite unmistakable. "His name is Alexander Derzhavin. He's a Ukrainian who has profited off of a booming human sex trafficking industry in the old Soviet states. He's finally opened up shop in Canada and we need to nab this guy before he spreads his shit to the U.S." Elliot explained.

"This kind of sounds like something that Interpol could accomplish with a simple arrest warrant, why is the CIA involved?" Willa questioned, her vexation obvious on her face.

"We are pretty sure that a lot of the money from his business, he is sending to Russia to fund the violence in Crimea, and because of that, he has gotten quite close to President Putin. Russia has been meddling in our affairs, and the chatter has been that they are targeting the next U.S. presidential election. We need someone close to him."

"You want to flip this guy?" Willa finally understood what the CIA's involvement was.

Yes, we need him on our side because of his potential intel, but we can't do that without access to him, and frankly, that has been impossible to get so far." Elliot explained. 

" _Ah_ , so that's where I come in, huh?" Willa asked rhetorically. 

Elliot nodded, trying with all of his might not to stare at Willa's legs. He turned and began rummaging through his bags, searching for something. "All we need is for you to get him alone enough to stick him with this." Elliot pulled a small syringe out of his briefcase and left it out in his hand for Willa to take. "Then Agent Rapp and I will get him back up here to this room, and I'll call in the team and we'll move him to the secondary location to flip him." 

"Yea, she won't need that." Mitch smirked, one arm crossed in front of his chest, while the other rested on top and his fingers pressed into his mouth and chin. 

" _Uh_ , but.. uh.." Elliot was flustered. 

"He's right. It'll ruin the lines of my dress. I can get him back up here without knocking him out with drugs." Willa smirked, and walked back into hers and Mitch's room. 

* * *

"Are you sure you don't want the knife, baby?" Mitch whispered into Willa's ear on the elevator, as he held a small blade concealed by the sleeve of his jacket. 

Willa glanced up at the camera in the corner and lightly hummed. " _Mhmm_." Mitch dumped the dagger into a potted plant next to the elevator, as he watched Willa saunter in to the ballroom. He leaned the right side of his body against the far end of the bar and surveyed the room as he waited for the bar tender to finish serving Willa. "Extra olives, _extra_ dirty." Willa requested, while batting her long and curled eyelashes at the hotel employee. 

" _Can you both get in better view of the security cameras?_   _I can only see the back of your head, Agent Hurley._   _Do you guys see him? He's in the corner by the deejay with all of those ballerinas. You should try to get in there, Agent Hurley."_ Elliot spoke into Mitch and Willa's earpieces from his room upstairs. 

Willa rolled her eyes and glanced down at Mitch in annoyance. Elliot clearly had been in the field by himself for a little too long and he was really beginning to grate Willa's nerves with his incessant chatter. "Excuse me, can you throw this out for me?" Willa caught the bartenders attention and handed him a balled up napkin. He nodded and tossed it in the trash behind the counter. "Thanks, handsome." Willa pushed her breasts together with her arms and leaned over the counter. The bartender blushed hard as he finished making her drink. 

" _Why isn't Agent Hurley replying, Rapp?"_ Elliot questioned. 

Mitch leaned his head down and pretended to check his watch. "Pretty sure she just threw her earpiece away, Polansky. Pretty sure she wanted you to shut the fuck up." Mitch critiqued the young man. He watched as Willa picked up her drink and moved to the end of the bar, in view of Derzhavin. She sat down on one of the barstools, ignoring the stares of the men around her. She crossed her legs and leaned back against the wooden counter. The slit of her dress parted dangerously high on her thigh, as she sipped on her gin martini and stirred her pick full of olives around her drink. He spotted her. It was hard not to. She was all legs, cleavage and firey red hair. In a room full of stunning, skinny, and tall ballerinas, Willa still managed to command the attention of anyone with a pulse. 

Mitch chatted with a French business man across the room, always keeping a watchful eye on his partner. He couldn't help but scowl as he watched her seductively sucking the gin soaked olives off of the wooden pick from her martini, while making eye contact with her mark from across the room. He wasn't fond of the honeypot trap. He liked it better when Willa was brutally torturing and murdering people. His breath hitched in the back of his throat as he watched her uncross and then recross her legs for Derzhavin. Mitch knew that the man couldn't get a good look at anything underneath Willa's dress with how quickly she moved, but he knew that it would leave Derzhavin wanting to see more. Mitch continued his conversation, bullshitting the man about the Greek debt crisis, thanking god that Willa read the news every morning and always updated him on what she thought was most interesting. 

Willa turned in her stool to face the bar again, and downed her drink. This was a delicate situation since two strong drinks, like a gin martini, were about all she could handle before there was a slight decline in her reaction timing and defensive skills. She wished Mitch could be the honeypot. He looked just as sexy in his tight fitting black suit, _and_ he could handle his liquor better than she. That was when she felt a hand on the small of her back. 

"May I buy you another drink, Miss?"

"Gauthier." She offered a fake last name. 

Derzhavin placed his vodka on the rocks on the counter, and picked up Willa's hand to kiss the back. "Enchanté, Mademoiselle Gauthier. Français, oui?"

Willa feigned delight and nodded, putting on the best ' _French speaking English_ ' accent that she could. " _Oui_. But you are not from France, I think?"

"The accent gave me away." Derzhavin smiled a horribly toothy smile, and Willa fought to not cringe at his poor dentistry. "Another drink?" 

"S'il vous plaît." Willa swiveled the chair so that her knee would brush against his thigh, and he grinned devilishly at her before grabbing the bartenders attention and ordering her another drink with a simple swirl of his fingers. He wanted to show off to her that he was someone important in a room full of important people. "I don't think I ever got your name, _le bel homme_."

"Alexander Derzhavin." He introduced himself and Willa caught the vision of Mitch circling through the reflection of the glass covering a painting behind the mark's head. She let out a deep breath; always at ease knowing he had her back. 

"So, what did you think of _Giselle_?" Willa asked about the ballet that they had all just returned from, as she picked up her drink from the counter and clinked it gently against Derzhavin's vodka. 

"Beautiful and tragic, but a true masterpiece. What about you, mademoiselle? Did you enjoy the ballet?"

Willa rubbed her knee against his leg with a bit more zeal and watched as a smirk developed on his mouth. "I thought it was romantic." She took a sip of her drink and maintained her eye contact with him. 

Derzhavin licked at the stubble on his top lip and made no effort to hide that he had just adjusted his growing erection in his pants. "Would you like to come sit with me and my friends, Mademoiselle...?" Derzhavin gestured to the couch full of lanky women in low cut dresses, glaring at the attention that he was feeding Willa. 

"Catherine." Willa offered the French pronunciation of her fake first name.

"Ah, Yekaterina. My mother's name." 

Willa smiled outwardly but winced internally. How could this man think that invoking his mother would be an effective flirting tactic? No wonder he had to resort to human sex trafficking to get his rocks off, Willa thought to herself. She ran her hand up his sleeve and shook her head, leaning in so that he could get an even better look at her breasts. "I don't want to sit. Je veux danser." She whispered before switching back to English. "I was hoping that there would be more dancing at this party. We did just see the ballet, after all."

Derzhavin smirked. "We were going to leave to go to a club downtown later, but I can make that happen sooner if you promise to come and dance with me there?" Willa had him. 

She pressed her hand against his chest, dragging it down his torso slowly and gently, as she answered him. "I can't go to a dance club in this. Would you like to come up to my room and help me pick out something a bit more," She hooked her fingers around his belt and he downed his drink. "appropriate?"

"Après toi, belle." Derzhavin helped her off of her high stool and followed her to the elevator. She pulled the key to her room out of her bra and he held on to the long silver chain necklace that hugged her throat and draped down her back, as if it were a leash. All Willa could think about doing was snapping his neck. She walked towards the elevators, Derzhavin to her left, and two of his bodyguards flanking them. She quickly surveilled the ballroom for Mitch, but he was no where to be found. She assumed he was laying in wait upstairs. 

* * *

"So, who are your friends?" Willa asked, glancing at the two men facing the doors of the elevator, as Derzhavin buried his lips into the crook of her neck, and hooked his hand under the back of her thigh. 

"Don't worry about them, chéri. They keep an eye out for me is all." Derzhavin mumbled against her skin, as he moved his hand up to her ass, dipping his fingers under the delicate lace of her underwear. 

"You _are_ an important man, aren't you?" She crooned, trying to butter him up even more. 

Derzhavin could never ignore a beautiful woman, stroking his ego. "A very big man in my industry." He confirmed with a smug grin, as he rubbed his fingers against the outside of her panties, hoping the find whether or not she was wet for him. She wasn't. 

Willa licked her lips and leaned in even closer. "A very big man, indeed." She said, as she slid her hand down his torso and pressed it against his erection. He moaned quietly as she began to rub and he grew harder. "They don't have to come inside, do they?" She asked, a faux innocence in her tone, as the elevator rang out indicating that it had reached her floor. 

"Is that a dealbreaker?" He asked, grabbing her ass, as he followed her out of the elevator and down the hall. She nodded. "They'll wait outside of the door, until we are ready to go to the club." Derzhavin said, telling his bodyguards, more than Willa, as she dipped her key into the lock mechanism on her door. 

"Would you like a drink?" Willa asked, as soon as the door clicked closed behind him. 

"No." Derzhavin glanced around the room, blatantly adjusting himself outside of his pants. 

Willa rolled her eyes and walked towards the closet, pulling two short and tight dresses out to hold up for Derzhavin. "Which do you want to see me in, Alexander?"

"The red."

Willa placed the silver back into the closet and draped the red dress over the dresser. She turned to make eye contact with her mark, and sauntered over to him. She was perpetrating a silent seduction, as his eyes dropped from hers, down to her hands to watch her slowly untie her dress. She unbuttoned the wrap from the inside and let the dress pool at her feet. She stood before him in a lacy black bra and panties set, and he licked his chops as if Willa was a piece of meat. She was waiting to hear the single knock on the adjoining door, indicating that Mitch had taken out the two bodyguards outside. She wondered what was taking him so long. 

* * *

Mitch opened the front door to Elliot's hotel room, pretending to leave, barely eliciting a glance from the closer bodyguard, but paused. 

"Uh, shit, do you have the time?" Mitch asked the men, who contorted their faces in confusion at him. 

"Fuck off." The further one scolded Mitch. 

Mitch approached the man. "I just want to know the time, man."

"Buy a watch." The man tucked his suit jacket back behind his hip for a moment, flashing Mitch a pistol with a silencer screwed on, and Mitch smiled. 

"I just wanted to know the time." Mitch repeated, before he wrapped his hands around the aggressive bodyguard's jaw and slammed his head against the doorframe.

* * *

"What was that?" Willa asked, knowing fully what the noise most likely finally was.

"I didn't hear anything." Derzhavin mumbled before returning back to kissing Willa's stomach and pawing at her breasts. 

* * *

Mitch broke the blade out of the second man's hand, struggling to fight him off as the first body guard clung to Mitch's back, trying to strangle him from behind. In one swift, and calculated motion, Mitch flipped the first man onto the ground, twirled the knife around in his hand so that the handle was gripped against his palm. He slipped the knife under the second man's left armpit, in between his ribs, and felt the blade tear flesh. A trick that Hurley had taught him back at The Barn; simply slip a knife in at the right angle, and it would pop a man's heart like it was a balloon. The man gurgled up blood then dropped to the floor. 

The second man, still laying on the ground, reached for his gun, and Mitch kicked him in the face with the heel of his dress shoe. He got on top of the man, his knee on his wrist, disabling the man from using his firearm, and he wrapped his hands around the bodyguard's neck. The man clawed and fought against Mitch with his available hand, scratching Mitch on the cheek and neck, until he passed out from lack of oxygen. 

Mitch finally stood, bringing his hand to his face and seeing blood on his fingertips. He quirked his eyebrows up, and looked at the blood pouring out of the dead man's mouth, ears and nose. He sighed, knowing he'd have to clean it up. He grabbed the dead man's ankles and dragged him into Polansky's room, then went back for the unconscious bodyguard.

* * *

Derzhavin sucked on Willa's nipples, yanking the fabric of her bra down with his hand, and she fake moaned. Her stomach churned thinking about all of the women he had done this to before selling them into sexual slavery for the rest of their inevitably short lives. She breathed out heavily, shaking and squirming under his touch. He took it for pleasure, instead, it was pure rage. His fingers took the place of his mouth on her breast, as he began kissing down her stomach again. He hooked his fingers around her underwear, when she finally spoke up.

" _No_ , _please_ , let me take care of you first." Willa begged, wriggling out from underneath him, and climbing on to her knees, next to him on the bed. 

"Oui." Derzhavin agreed, still speaking his poor man's French in order to impress her, as he began unbuckling his pants. He pulled them down around his ankles, and Willa pulled them off all of the way. She was praying for the knock on the door. She glanced up at him; average, wrinkly, and a forest of black hair. She cringed on the inside, but began kissing up his hairy thighs. 

"Do you want me?" She asked, as she skipped over his hardening erection, and went to kiss his stomach and chest. 

"Da." Derzhavin moaned in his native language, before his hand suddenly made its way into Willa's short, auburn wig. He curled his fingers and felt it move. He looked down at her and she paused. "What the fuck is this?" He pulled at her wig, yanking some of her real hair in the process, and ripped it off of her head. " **WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, YOU BITCH**?" Derzhavin sat up and grabbed at Willa, catching the delicate chain of the necklace the Mitch had given her in Iceland for her birthday and subsequently ripping it from her neck. 

"You fucking..." Willa lurched at the man, her soft brown braid falling over her shoulder as she wrapped her hands around his throat.

Derzhavin kicked Willa off, she hit the wall with some force and fell beside the bed. He scrambled to get away from her, and get his pants, which held his knife in his pocket, but Willa repositioned back onto her feet. She pulled the long, strong silver chain necklace that had been gracefully cascading down her back all night, from around her neck and wrapped it around her hands. Derzhavin grabbed his knife and lunged at Willa's vulnerable flesh. She wrapped his wrist in the strong chain and pushed her back against his chest, helping to give her the momentum and power that she needed to toss the man onto his back below her. He flew through the air and landed on the ground with a heavy thud. She stepped on his hand with her sharp heel, causing the knife to fall to the rug, she then kicked it under the bed. Willa was flushed red with rage. She elbowed him in the face twice and pressed her knee against his balls.

He coughed and clawed at her and managed to push her off of him once again. He crawled to get the knife from under the bed, and Willa seized upon his compromising position. She rewrapped the chain around her hands, pulling it taught in front of her, and then yanked it around Derzhavin's throat. She pushed her knee against his spine and pulled backward, wrapping the length of the necklace around her wrist and elbow, ensuring that it was shortened, and it was tight. Derzhavin gurgled and choked, and Willa pulled tighter, suddenly hearing a knock at the adjoining door. She didn't stop. She wanted this man dead.  

She pulled again harder, as she heard the door open. "W! W, stop. W, enough!" Mitch pulled her off of Derzhavin, who dropped to the floor, gasping for air, his face a brighter red than the ripest strawberry in the middle of summer. "Willa...." Mitch used her real name, an attempt to try to snap her out of her rage, but she panted, and twitched, fighting against his hold. 

"He broke my fucking necklace." Willa snarled as she glared at the choking Ukrainian in the corner, cowering in fear of Polansky's gun.

Mitch smirked and then snickered, glancing over at Derzhavin, then down to the bloody chain that had dug deep into her palms, drawing blood. "W, I think your necklace almost broke his neck, it looks fine." 

Willa broke from Mitch's hold, turned and began crawling on the floor. "No, he broke my necklace. _Your_ necklace." She searched for the chain and found it, snapped in half, with the diamond missing.

"I found it, W." Mitch held the diamond in between his thumb and pointer finger, and sent her a lopsided smile. "I'll get you a new chain, it's not a big deal."

"What took you so long?" She sniped at the two men. 

Mitch raised his eyebrows in surprise, but Elliot spoke first, somewhat out of fear of her. "I was wiping the security cameras in the building and cleaning the blood out in the hall, and Rapp was eliminating the bodyguards."

"Took your sweet fucking time, huh?" She sneered, catching Polansky staring at her nearly naked body a bit too long. 

Willa walked towards the bathrobe on the chair in the corner and wrapped it around her, before Mitch finally pulled her aside, away from Polansky, who was finally tying Derzhavin to the desk chair. "Are you okay? Were you seriously about to kill this guy over the necklace?"

"It wasn't over the necklace, although that certainly didn't help." Willa muttered, staring behind Mitch at Polansky and Derzhavin. 

"Did he touch you?" Mitch asked, finally garnering Willa's full attention. 

"I'm fine."

Mitch shook his head, still holding her arm in his hand. That didn't answer his question. "No, you're shaking." 

"I'm fine." She hissed, her nostrils flaring and her eyes narrowing on his. 

Polansky slipped into the other room to call for the exfil team, and Mitch took advantage of the almost empty room, ignoring Derzhavin's presence as if he didn't even exist. "Baby, sit.... please." He guided her onto the side of the bed and stood in front of her, blocking her view of the Ukrainian scumbag behind him. "How late was I?" He couldn't help but ask. 

Willa's eyes, angry and still, glanced up at him from under her long black lashes. "I'm fine." She repeated unconvincingly. 

Mitch crouched in front of her. He was angry that he decided not to use his gun to just kill both of the men in the hall, speeding up the process of helping Willa by double. He didn't want the blood splatter or extra cleanup. He was angry that he agreed to letting Willa put herself in this position in the first place. He was angry with Irene for asking her to do this. She knew what Willa had been through just a few short months before. His heart beat rapidly as he gently and hesitantly rested his hands on her knees. "Talk to me."

Polansky came back in to their room, interrupting their conversation, as he began to speak, failing to hide the panic in his voice. "His security team is searching the hotel looking for him. I heard it over the walkie-talkies on the bodyguards. The exfil team can't retrieve him until they can get in and out of the hotel unnoticed. We have to hold him."

"Fine." Mitch huffed, standing finally. "Go make sure he's secure. I have extra zipties in my bag." He pointed to his duffel on the floor by the lounge chair in the corner. 

Polansky walked off and Willa looked up at Mitch. "He touched me." She scowled and swallowed hard. " _All over_."

Mitch felt his short fingernails dig into his palms as his rage swelled. _Anger, anger, anger_. It always came easiest. He turned, unsure of what he was even about to do to Derzhavin, but Willa caught his wrist, and kept him in front of her. "I'm going to kill him, Will."

"I know." She whispered, suddenly placing her free hand on his stomach. Mitch narrowed his eyes at her, and furrowed his brow. He was confused by her actions. 

"Will, what are y-"

"I just need to feel in control of something right now." She admitted in an almost inaudible whisper. Mitch's heart beat hard against his ribs, and he remained silent. This didn't feel right. There were other people in the room. She had just been groped and kissed and fondled by another man, but it was also _her_ hands on him, pulling his black shirt out from under the waist of his pants. It was _Willa's_ hands that were unbuckling his black leather belt, and trying to unhook the fastener on the waist of his pants. 

"Polansky." 

"Yea?"

"Is he secured?" Mitch asked, and Polansky assured him that he was. "Go check the cameras to see where his bodyguards are in the building, and make sure that the security cameras were completely wiped clean of any trace of you, me, Hurley and that piece of shit." Polansky nodded and went back into his room. Mitch followed him and closed and locked the adjoining door. He ignored Polansky banging and yelling on the other side. Derzhavin shifted uncomfortably in the corner, unsure of what was about to happen. 

"M." Willa spoke low, regaining his attention, and drawing him back to her. She watched his Adam's Apple bob up and down, as he swallowed thickly. He stood in front of her again, cupping his hands around her cheeks and scrunching his forehead. Her hands reached up for his neck, and he leaned down to kiss her. He sighed into her connection, as her hands pulled the bathrobe off of her body, then worked their way down to his zipper. He was at half mast, at best.

"Just moving from one man to the next, huh? A regular shlyukha." Derzhavin spit from the corner of the room.

Willa paused in her movements, but Mitch knew what to do. He pulled his suit jacket off, and tossed it gently on the bed next to Willa, then pulled his fully loaded Beretta with a muzzle on the barrel out of the back of his loose pants. He held it out to the side, and pulled back the spring-loaded safety. The weapon was hot, and Derzhavin grew quiet, as Mitch placed the gun on the mattress. He turned back to Willa and shook his head. 

"Will..." He whispered, a sadness lurking in the corners of his eyes. Willa wrapped the robe back around her and pushed Mitch away. She swiped the gun off the bed, and walked towards the bathroom. "W..." Mitch spoke loudly after her. She didn't close or lock the door, so he followed her.

The gun was on the counter, the safety locked back into it's dead position, and Willa was leaning against the sink, her hands braced against the edge. She caught Mitch's reflection in the mirror. He sent her a sympathetic smile, but she remained hardened. She turned on the faucet, grabbed her toothbrush, ran it under the water, and stuck it in her mouth. She bit against the bristles as she unscrewed the cap on their toothpaste. Willa squirted a healthy dollop of toothpaste into her mouth and began brushing vigorously. 

"Did he,  _um_... _stick..._ anything..." There was no good way to ask just how violated Willa had been.

"No." She mumbled before spitting some of the toothpaste into the sink. 

"He's half naked though, an-" 

"Nothing was stuck anywhere." She said, muffled by the contents in her mouth. 

" _Okay_." Mitch whispered, before stepping fully into the bathroom with her, and hesitantly laying his hands on the back of her fluffy white robe. 

"You're bleeding." She muttered before spitting in the sink again. 

"I think it stopped." Mitch brought his fingers up to the crusting blood on his face.

Willa spit the last of the toothpaste out, cupped her hand under the faucet, and slurped the water into her mouth, spitting one last time before tossing her toothbrush next to the gun. She shut off the water and braced herself back against the sink once more. Her adrenaline and anger was still coursing through her body. Mitch stepped forward slowly, and she felt him behind her. The smallest amount of comfort came from his presence. More comfort came when she felt him pull at the hair tie keeping her braid together. He ran his long fingers through her soft, matted tresses and watched as her hair splayed across the white robe. He leaned forward and pulled the fabric off of her shoulders, letting it pool at their feet. She closed her eyes and attempted to steady her breathing as he pressed up against her, but leaned past her to turn the hot water faucet on. She watched him in the reflection of the mirror, as his hands cupped her wrists and pulled her palms under the warm water. She winced as the bloody water circled the drain. 

Mitch shut the water off and grabbed at the clean hand towels on the side of the counter. He pressed them against her hands, and then stepped away to grab the first aid kid on the back of the toilet. He pulled out the gauze and tape and bandaged her palms. She smiled softly at him. He knew how to bring her back every time. He left a long, hard kiss against her forehead and she sighed and shut her eyes once more. "Tell me what you want." He whispered between short kisses on her neck and jaw. 

Willa leaned her head away from Mitch, allowing him more access to her skin. "I want you to keep doing that."

"Okay." He mumbled, as he kept kissing her. 

"I want to feel your lips on me."

"What else?" Mitch asked, moving her hair over her left shoulder so that he could kiss her chest. 

"I want some control." She admitted quietly. 

"Tell me what you want, and I'll do it." He told her, looking her dead in her hazel eyes. Willa reached up and began unbuttoning Mitch's black dress shirt. He watched her fingers make quick work of his clothing. She paused, forcing back flashbacks of having to kiss Derzhavin's chest. "Can I?" Mitch asked, fully requiring her permission before really touching her. She nodded, and sighed, being brought back into the moment with him as soon as _his_ familiar and strong hands connected with her sides. 

"What ar-" She stopped speaking as she saw Mitch drop to his knees in front of her. 

"You're in control." He submitted to her fully and the tiniest twitch at the corner of her mouth occurred. "Tell me what I am allowed to do." 

She peeled her underwear off of herself, stepping out of it once it pooled around her ankles. She towered over him in her stiletto heels, so she leaned her butt against the edge of the sink, and quirked an eyebrow up at him. A sinful smile spread across Mitch's face, as he licked his lips and leaned forward. Willa spread her legs slightly and cooed when Mitch bumped her clit with the tip of his upturned nose. He brought a finger up but stopped when he heard her voice. 

"Just your mouth."

He nodded. "Can I ask you to please turn around and bend over the sink?" 

She smiled and did as he graciously requested, her elbows connecting with the cold marble counter. She sighed loudly when she felt his muscular and hard hands spread her ass cheeks apart gently. His beard tickled the inside of her thighs, as the tip of his tongue suddenly connected with her opening. Mitch paused for a moment to pull the hair that had gotten tousled, during his fight, off his forehead, and admire her perfectly plump pink lips peeking out between her legs. He let out a deep, hot breath, and she shuddered involuntarily when it connected with her skin. 

"Mitch." She said his name firmly, and Mitch grinned. 

"Sorry, baby." 

"Shut up and stick your tongue inside of me." She demanded. 

He grinned wider and felt his cock twitch in his pants. He hoped she would let him fuck her later. Mitch pulled her cheeks up and apart again, gaining greater access to her, and he circled her opening with his pointed tongue, before plunging the muscle inside of her. She purred quietly and squirmed against the counter. 

"Suck on my clit." Another command fell from her lips, and Mitch obliged. 

He moved his mouth down to the engorged nub, just waiting for some attention, and she jolted forward when his lips suctioned around it. A punched moan fell from her lips as Mitch sucked her in between his teeth and gently nibbled at her. She felt her eyes roll back in her head, and let her forehead fall against the cool surface below. 

"Oh god. Just like that. Don't fucking stop." Mitch wouldn't dare. "Hold it with your teeth and flick it with your tongue." Mitch loved knowing exactly what she wanted from him, and he loved that she felt confident enough in that moment to demand it. He did exactly as she wished, and heard the hard metal of one of her rings smack against the glass of the mirror above her. "Go back to sucking..." She paused for just a moment. "Don't stop. I'm gonna cum."

Mitch's enthusiasm jumped into overdrive and he sucked as hard as he could. The moans and whimpers coming from her throat spurred him on even more, until he felt her begin to shake. He tried to keep his mouth attached through her spasms for as long as he could, until she told him to get off. He separated from her clit, and wiped his mouth and beard of her juices, licking his lips to happily taste her still. He remained on his knees, not wanting her to feel like she wasn't still in control of the situation and him. 

"Baby?" Her voice was a little bit lighter, but he could still hear the authoritarian underneath. 

"Yes?"

"Stand up." She told him, finally lifting herself off of the counter. "Can you check on the scumbag?" 

Mitch stood, grabbed the gun off the counter, and popped his head out of the open door. Derzhavin ceased his useless struggles as soon as he saw Mitch's face and gun. Mitch turned back to Willa, who had turned around to face him. "He's still tied up." 

She nodded once, pulled the gun out of his hand and put it back on the end of the counter. "Help me up." Mitch smirked and helped to hoist her up on the counter. He hoped that his assumptions as to where this was going were correct. "Take your shirt off." 

Mitch smirked, licking his mouth out of lust, and happily still tasting her on the hairs of his beard that curled towards his pink lips. His shirt fell to the floor and her hands immediately connected with his rippling muscles. She loved the lines of his body. His defined ribs and how they pointed down to his bulging abdomen and the thick trail of dark hair that led from his navel to below his boxer briefs. Her hands traced the hair on his body, a serious look on her face, as she breathed heavily and pressed her fingers against his skin. 

"I love you." She whispered, glancing up to connect with his darkened and lustful eyes. 

He softened for a moment because she did. "I love you, too." He felt her hand squeeze at his bulging biceps and his impish tendencies came back. "What do you want me to do next?" 

"Speak when you're spoken to, first of all." Willa half teased, and a toothy grin spread across Mitch's face. He nodded once and pressed his lips together, waiting for her next command. "Take your pants off." She stared down at his erection, and Mitch moved torturously slow. " _Mitch_." She warned, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head at him. He grinned and pulled them down to his ankles, finally standing in front of her in all his naked glory. "Do you want me still?" A modicum of self-doubt crept into her tone, as she asked the question of him. 

"I always want you." Mitch reassured her. "Can I kiss you?" She nodded softly and Mitch leaned in, wrapping his arms around her back, while pressing his lips firmly against hers. He pulled away, his hands resting under the fabric hooked across her back. "Can I take this off please?" She nodded again, and he pulled apart her bra and dropped it to the floor with his clothes. "Can I kiss your neck?" Willa quirked an eyebrow up and tilted her head to the side, a serious look on her face. "Please?" Mitch corrected himself, and Willa smirked and nodded. 

Mitch was gentle in his kisses on her neck and shoulders, softly tracing his tongue across her skin, and then going back over the trail with his lips. Her soft sighs and fingers pressing against his ribs let him know that she was okay and enjoying herself. "I want you inside of me." She whispered into the air, and Mitch felt his head spin a little. Besides 'I love you', those were his favorite words to hear in her voice. 

Mitch left a final few kisses on her shoulder and looked up at her, his thumbs rubbing back and forth against her hipbones. "How do you want it?" 

Willa looked down at their position, her legs were loosely wrapped around his muscular ass, and her hands were still gripped around his ribcage. "This is fine." 

He nodded once in agreement. "Can you please scoot to the edge of the counter?" Willa began to move, but Mitch pulled her towards him to speed up the process. "Are you ready?" He asked, fully aware of how incredibly hard he'd been for the last several minutes. Willa nodded and looked down, watching as Mitch gripped his veiny shaft and pressed it against her tight entrance. He pushed in just enough that only his tip made it's way inside of her. Her hands moved up to the back of his muscular neck and bicep, and she squeezed, still watching him slowly disappear in her. He bottomed out, his hips meeting her ass, and she clenched her jaw and closed her eyes. "Can I move?" He asked her permission. 

"Yes.... Slowly." She answered. Mitch began to thrust slowly in and out of Willa's tight pussy. Their heavy breaths matched one another and Mitch adored the sight of her mouth slightly open, head tilted back, eyes shut, brow furrowed, completely lost in their connection. He picked up his pace slightly, not really even realizing it himself, but Willa didn't mind. She wanted more anyway. 

"Does it feel good?" He asked, falling out of his role of quiet submission, in order to check in on her uncharacteristically quiet nature. 

Willa opened her eyes, and saw the worry in his. She smiled, leaned forward and kissed him on his beautiful pink lips. "You feel incredible. I just don't want him to hear." She told him, and Mitch understood. He returned her smile, and kissed her once more. "Can you speed up a little?" She asked, somewhat forgetting about the little game they were playing. 

Mitch felt it necessary to remind her who was in control that night. "Whatever you want, baby. You're in control.."

Willa grinned, then moaned, louder than she wanted, throwing her head forward to lean on Mitch's shoulder as he picked up his pace. "Harder." Mitch loved when she mumbled that specific request. Soft and gentle was something he loved doing with her, but hard and aggressive and deep was what his body always craved. He thrust up into her with force, over and over and over again. She began to crumble slightly and he realized that this angle was giving him perfect access to her g-spot. "More... more.." She demanded, and Mitch pressed his hands against the tops of her thighs, keeping her in place on the counter, and continued his assault on her sensitive spot. 

"Baby..." Mitch whined, his eyes shut and forehead covered in deep wrinkles. 

She understood. "Just a little more.." He thought about anything but coming, and kept thrusting hard up into her. He was so close, but for her, he would try his hardest not to until she told him he was allowed. "Oh god." Mitch was pushed to his edge the moment he felt Willa's walls tighten around him. Her head dug into his shoulder and her legs spasmed under his hold, and he suffered, trying to hold off while still thrusting up into her. She heard a small whimper escape from between his lips, and she grinned, pulling her head up to look at him. "Let it go, baby. You can-" Before she could even fully give him permission, Mitch moaned and lurched forward, pressing his head against her shoulder. She smiled and rubbed his back and the nape of his neck, up into his hair, calming him as his body pushed up into her more gently a few more times, trying to rid itself of the final spurts of his seed. His breath shuttered and his chest shook. He was unsure if he had ever cum that hard before. She stroked the hair on the back of his head and he breathed against her chest. "Are you okay, my love?" She whispered into his ear.

Mitch nodded against her shoulder quietly, then finally lifted his head to look at her. "Are you?" He was met with a calm smile, and nod. 

"Yea. I'll be fine. Thank you for... that." She mumbled, a slight blush finally rising to her cheeks. 

Mitch picked up his hands to cup her face, and he pressed his lips against her pillowy pair. He pulled back after a moment and smiled at her, shrugging gently. "I just did what you asked." 

She stared at him, adoringly, and rubbed her thumb against his bearded cheek. "Should we let Polansky back in?" 

Mitch squinted and bobbed his head back and forth. "I was thinking..." Willa tilted her head to the side, curious as to what crazy shit might come out of her lover's mouth. "This guy is the scum of the earth-"

"Agreed." 

"And he's stuck with us, probably until the morning, right?"

"Until the exfil team can find a way to extract him from the hotel." Willa answered, not knowing when that would be.

"It'd be silly to just sit around here, watching TV or something."

"You wanna torture him?" Willa surmised what Mitch was getting at. 

He smirked. "I thought it might make you feel better, it might scare him a little extra from thinking about doing his business in America ever, and who knows, maybe we can get him to agree to a lower price in selling his secrets about Russia."

Willa grinned, and shook her head. "We shouldn't." 

"Does that mean we won't?" He countered, playfully. 

"I love when you talk torture while you're still inside of me." She teased, a massive beam spread across her face. 

Mitch pushed his softening cock against her and she laughed. He leaned forward and connected their lips once more, then massaged his thumb against her cheekbone. "Why don't you take a shower or bath or something, get him off of you..." Willa nodded, wanting that as well, as Mitch finally pulled out, and turned to get the water warmed up. "And I'll get him ready for you." 

"You should let Elliot back in." She said, as she hopped off the counter. 

"I guess. He won't like this though." 

Willa shrugged as she placed her fingers under the running water, checking the temperature. "What's he gonna do about it?" She snarked, and Mitch simply chuckled as he pulled his boxer briefs and pants back up around his waist. "Try not to break any fingers until I get out there, okay?" She asked, stepping into the shower. 

"No promises." Mitch replied with a smirk, as he buttoned his shirt back up and tucked his gun in the back of his trousers, leaving Willa to let the water wash over her and allow her to feel like herself again. 


	36. Day 166

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven has upgraded his office spaces, landed some big new clients, and invited half of Lower Manhattan to a party to celebrate. Mitch spends the day and night trying to convince Willa to not make him go to the club where his brother’s event is being held.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the result of an anonymous request on tumblr to base a Mitch chapter around Beyonce's 'Partition'.  
> enjoy the smutty goodness.

"I hate clubs." Mitch groaned, massaging the conditioner leftover on his hands from his dark brown hair into his beard. 

"It's your brother, baby. We have to go. We have literally no actual excuses to get us out of this." Willa said, sitting on the counter of the sink, pushing her jet black mascara into her eyelashes in the mirror. 

"I could tell him that you are a covert spy for the CIA and that we can't go." Mitch played around, as he held his breath and dipped his beard under the warm water.

Willa snickered, and stared at her wet, muscular and sexy as hell boyfriend through the open door of the shower. "I don't know if that's so much an excuse to get out of things, as it is a secret that you aren't supposed to tell." 

Mitch smirked, his eyes closed and his head leaning back, allowing the water to rinse the conditioner out of his long hair. "Are they even going to let me in? You were right. I am looking more and more like Bigfoot every day." 

Willa bit her bottom lip and smirked, hard. "I would fuck Bigfoot if he looked like you."

"That's disgusting." Mitch laughed.

"That's the truth." Willa shrugged, watching Mitch turn off the shower and wrap his towel around his waist. "Between that dick, those muscles, the glorious fucking hair, and your stupidly perfect fucking face-"

Mitch cut her off. "Can we tell Steven that I am fucking you until you can't walk anymore? Do you think that would get us out of going to this thing?" He wrapped his hands around Willa's waist, snaking his right hand down, in between the opening of the robe, and up Willa's thigh. He rubbed her clit gently, and Willa sighed, leaning her towel wrapped head against his shoulder. "I will do you so right if you don't make us go to this." 

Willa exhaled loudly, groaned, pulled his hand from her clit, and turned to face him, leaving her legs on either side of his waist. Willa picked up his fingers, placed them into her mouth, sucked the little bit of juices that he had on his tips off, and then wiped them dry with her robe. "If you are good and go to this thing, I will give you the best head of your life, morning, noon, and night, every day for the next week."

"That sounds less like a chore and more like something you already want to do." Mitch grinned, feeling his length hardening under his towel. 

"Okay, I don't have to, I mean, I was ju-"

"Nope, I will shut the fuck up and get dressed." Mitch held his hands up in surrender. He wanted the blowjobs. Willa laughed, turned back around to the mirror, and continued doing her makeup. "Where is this place and how dressy do I have to look?" Mitch shouted from their bedroom. 

Willa smirked back at herself in the mirror and began applying a clean swipe of black gel liner on her top lids. "I don't think you have to wear a jacket, but dress pants and a dress shirt. It's the rooftop at Penthouse 808 over in Long Island City, by the Queensborough Bridge. It's a cute little place right on the East River."

Mitch came in with a pair of taupe pants and a white dress shirt and held them up for Willa to see. She smiled and nodded at his choice and he walked over to kiss her on the neck, not wanting to mess up her makeup. "Long Island City is in Queens, right?" Mitch was still learning all of the neighborhoods in the city, but, as always, was a quick study. Willa nodded back at him in the mirror. "Are we taking the Maserati?" Mitch asked of the car that he and Willa had been driving since they had gotten back from Iceland.

"Steven is sending a car for us." 

"What are you wearing?" Mitch asked, running a comb through his drying hair. 

"You'll see." Willa smirked. 

* * *

"Fuck me." Mitch muttered to himself as he followed Willa down the hallway towards the elevator. She was wearing a tight, powder blue silky slip dress, that tugged against her every curve, and plunged down her back. Her hair was tied up into a simple and neat top knot, and she smeared a red stain on her lips. Her black clutch matched her black strappy stilettos, and her legs went on for days in that particular set of shoes. 

The doors to the elevator closed and Mitch pushed Willa up against the wall, bending at his knees in order to get a better angle at her neck. He heard her purse drop to the floor as her hands wrapped around his neck and her breath grew heavy with pants and sighs. He grabbed at her breasts over her dress, and then moved his fingers up to pull the thin straps down. The dress caught around Willa's elbows, as Mitch attached his mouth to her hardening nipples and he flicked one and then the other between his teeth. Willa pressed her thigh against his cock, feeling his hardened member against her leg, as she moaned and gasped for normal breaths. Mitch had been on that elevator enough times, at that point, to know they were somewhere around the seventh floor and they would be down at the lobby in mere moments. He dragged his hands down her body, slid them up under her dress, and pulled her lacy nude underwear down her legs. She stepped out of them, adjusting her dress back over her body, with a curious smile on her face. 

"You shouldn't ruin that dress by wearing anything underneath it." He whispered, the smuggest grin on his lips, as he scrunched the lace in his hand and tucked it away in his pants pocket. Willa felt a vibration surge through her body at the teasing act, and then looked up as she heard the bell ring, indicating that they had made it to the lobby. Mitch bent over, picked up her purse from the floor, and held his hand against the door. "After you." Willa smacked her matte red lips together, shook her head, and strutted out of the elevator, putting on a show for Mitch.

Mitch followed behind her and smirked when the jaw of doorman dropped at the sight of his girlfriend. "Miss Hurley, Mr. Krause, have a nice night." The doorman said, regaining his composure and professionalism. 

"Thank you, Chris. You as well."

"Mr. Rapp?" The driver asked, as he rushed to grab the door handle for Willa. Mitch nodded and waited for her to get in the backseat, before climbing in after her. 

"You're evil for doing that." She whispered, as she heard the engine start in the front of the medium sized limousine. An impish grin dimpled Mitch's cheeks, as he placed her clutch on the seat next to him. 

"I know." Mitch replied. 

"You're going to Penthouse 808 in Long Island City, correct?"

"Yes." Willa replied through the open window between the front and back of the car. She turned back to Mitch. "You look very sexy tonight. The hair is killing me nowadays, and the rolled up sleeves. Mmmf." She tried to keep from licking her lips and messing up her makeup any further.

"As long as you're impressed." He winked, then turned his attention back to the driver. "How long do you think it will take, sir?" Mitch asked, while placing his hand on Willa's knee. 

She licked her lips and dropped her head back against the headrest, staring at the impish smirk on his face, as he paid her no attention other than his hand sliding up her thigh. She glanced down at his veiny forearm, as it flexed against his rolled up sleeve. She breathed out slowly. He was killing her. 

"There was a crash on the FDR Drive, so thirty to forty minutes." The driver responded. 

Willa pressed her fingers against her cheeks, they were hot and flushed. "Okay, well the Mrs. said that this place is right under the Queensboro so if we could take that regardless of the traffic. We're in no rush." Mitch told the driver, who fake saluted him in the reflection of his rear view mirror. Mitch finally turned his attention back to his girlfriend, who had a vice grip on his hand, preventing it from climbing any further up her leg. "Do you want some wine? I see a bottle of red."

She pursed her lips together, trying to prevent a grin, as she pressed the back of her hand against her cheeks and forehead, trying to cool down. "Sure." 

"Feeling a little hot there, Will?" Mitch smirked, as he pulled the cork out of the bottle and began pouring two glasses. 

"I'm doing just fine." She replied, as she took the glass from his hand and stared him in the eyes as he went to cheers her. " _Oh my god_." She exhaled loudly, at the unexpected feeling of Mitch's strong hand slipping between her thighs. "What if he can see?" She whispered, feeling his fingers dip into her wet opening. 

Mitch set his glass down in one of the holders, and turned towards Willa more, sticking his fingers back inside of her, no longer fighting the inevitable, her legs spread open waiting for him. "He can't." Mitch replied smugly, between kisses under her ear and on the back of her neck. 

"Mitch, it took me forty-five minutes to get all dressed up. Stop trying to make sure that we don't end up at this club."

Mitch quirked up his eyebrows. "I'm not doing anything of the sort, baby." She wasn't buying his faux innocence.

Willa leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She didn't really care either way. "In that case, I'm not doing anything either..." She trailed off, a smile permanent on her lips, as her hand found the growing bulge in his pants. She rubbed her fingers back and forth over his erection and Mitch exhaled loudly. "Not so fun to be teased, is it?" 

Mitch kissed her on the cheek, and then let her feel the grin on his lips spread across her skin. "I'm not teasing, Will. I'm trying to get you to cum." 

"Oh fuck you." She said breathily. 

"No, fuck me." Mitch replied arrogantly. Willa forgot her manners. She took a large sip from her wine, set it down in the cupholder in front of her, pulled Mitch's hand out from between her thighs, and swung her left leg over him, to straddle his lap. " _This_ , I think he can see, baby." Mitch licked his lips, and ran his hands up her thigh and up her back, pulling at the fabric as his hand moved up her spine. 

"I don't fucking care." She said, as her fingers unbuckled his brown belt and then made work of the button and zipper. Mitch's chest heaved and rose as he watched her. Her nipples pointed through the fabric of her dress and her skin blushed a dewy red. Mitch wrapped his hands around her ass, grabbing fistfuls over her dress, as she gyrated down against his lap. Her lips dominated his and Mitch just laid back and let her take control. He had successfully riled her up and he'd let her do what she wanted. At this point, he was certain that he'd enjoy anything she would do to him. " _Oh_.." She pulled his ear lobe between her teeth and Mitch let out a moan. "Have I turned you on?" She teased, rubbing her hand against his erection. He bit his lower lip slowly and smirked, shaking his head at her. "Do you wanna fuck?" Mitch couldn't wipe the grin off of his face, and he nodded. "Too bad." Willa dismounted from his lap and sat back down on the seat next to him, swiftly picking up her glass and taking another sip of wine. 

Mitch groaned, and sat against the seat for a minute. "I deserved that." He whispered, staring at the ceiling of the car. "You deserve this."

He turned and pressed his lips against hers, and slipped his hand back up her thigh again. Mitch's pink lips, tugged and sucked at her red-stained ones, as his fingers pumped in and out of her. He pulled his head back and saw her mouth open, gasping for air, as her eyes fluttered closed. She downed the rest of her wine, and let the glass drop to the foot well. Her fingers broke up the stiff pomade slicking his hair back, and she whined when she felt his free hand yank the strap to her dress off her shoulder. His lips moved from her neck, down her chest, to attach themselves to her hard nipple. He loved the look of her. Her hair and makeup still neat and clean and perfectly in tact, but her dress was disheveled and barely covering her anymore, and her legs were spread open for him. He could see his pointer and middle finger, covered in her arousal, working fast against her throbbing clit. 

Mitch yanked down the other strap and took her other breast in his mouth, her dress yet again pooling around her elbows. The first spasm was exactly what he wanted to see. He tugged on her nipple with his teeth and she moaned, completely forgetting that they were not alone. She grabbed at his perfect dark brown hair, keeping him from moving his mouth away from her chest. The second spasm caused her toes to curl against the leather soles of her sandals. 

"Give me what I want." Mitch demanded, pressing his fingers firmer against her clit, as he continued to rub enthusiastically. 

"Keep going." She told him, breathily. "Ahh." She moaned out, her body rolling with her orgasm, as Mitch watched with a grin.

That was when the car swerved enough that both Mitch and Willa noticed. There was no panic, no rush; neither of them cared too much. Mitch snickered, finding it funny that they got so wrapped up in their desire for one another that they forgot that they were not alone. He pulled his fingers from her body, the absence of his touch sending an aftershock through her body. She laughed quietly and closed her legs. Mitch licked his fingers one by one and then pulled the straps back up her arms, covering Willa back up. He glanced back up at the driver, who was trying to hard to act like he had not seen any of that. 

"Should we ask him to join us?" Mitch joked. 

Willa stared at Mitch like he was a piece of meat, biting and licking her lips. "Driver, roll up the partition please." She requested without looking away from the man who brought her body immense pleasure. 

"Ye, uh, yesm.. Ma'am..." He stuttered, as he pushed the button and the divider between the front of the car and the back of the car went up. 

"He doesn't need to see what happens next." She whispered to Mitch, before leaning over to pick the glass up from rolling on the floor.

She placed it in the cup holder and then climbed down into the foot well of the car. Mitch smirked and let his brows wrinkle his forehead. He loved seeing her on her knees in front of him. He didn't care where they were. She kneeled between his legs and rubbed her hand back and forth over his pants. Mitch felt her hand press against his balls and his shaft and he scrunched his face up in pleasure. Willa pressed her plump red lips together as she pulled down his pants and boxer briefs to his ankles, and Mitch slid down the leather seat, with an already satisfied grin. 

Willa wet her lips and stared up at Mitch as she kissed up the inside of his thighs. She took his hard cock in her hand and pushed her thumb down against his slit, wiping any precum off onto her finger, as she opened her mouth and sucked on his balls. Mitch relaxed into the seat and breathed heavily as Willa rotated her tongue over his testicles. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back and smiled; he had to go to this party, but at least he had something to think about all evening while there. 

"Ah. Oh god." He breathed out, attaching his large hand to the back of Willa's head as she tried to make her nose hit his stomach, his cock hitting the back of her throat and her gag reflex stopping that from happening at that angle. 

Mitch kept his hand on the back of her head, watching her bob up and down in the perfect rhythm on his shaft, her cheeks hollowed out and her lipstick smearing slightly around her mouth. He relished in the sounds of her slurping, choking, gagging and sucking on his dick, and loved the way her mouth and hand moved in tandem on him. She brought her free hand up to his balls and rolled them between her fingers. Mitch loaned louder than usual, and it only made Willa more enthusiastic. She licked from the base of the underside of his shaft up to the tip and rolled her tongue under the head. Mitch bit his lip hard when he looked down and saw her staring smugly. Her hair was messy, her lipstick was smudged onto her chin and cheeks, he realized that in his enthusiasm, he ripped one of the straps to her dress, and he genuinely thought she had never looked more perfect. She sucked on just the head of his cock, her hand tightly wound and pumping the rest of him, and Mitch knew it was coming. 

"Lean back, lean back." He demanded, and Willa grinned, sitting back on her heels, and slowly laying her tongue flat in front of him, all while staring up in his eyes, as he leaned forward and began gruffly stroking himself. "Open that mouth for me, baby." Mitch pressed his thumb against her chin, and pulled her mouth open wider in anticipation of what was about to happen. Suddenly, hot strings of cum spurted out of Mitch's cock aiming for Willa's mouth. About half made it on to her tongue and lips, the other half hit her chin and neck and dress... 

Mitch relaxed back into the seat, his throbbing and softening length still in his hand, as he rested his head against the seatback. Willa wiped the cum off of her chin and licked her finger and her lips clean, swallowing all he had to offer on her face. "Oh shit." She mumbled, and Mitch shot his head up in alarm at her cussing. 

"What- Oh shit." He followed her gaze. 

"You fucking Monica Lewinsky'ed me." She stared up at him, a wide eyed, annoyed, yet amused look rested on her face. Mitch couldn't help but laugh out loud at her reference. "Did you do that on purpose?"

"No, no." Mitch chuckled and looked for a towel or tissues. "I also didn't rip your dress on purpose." 

"You what?!" She looked down and saw the right side strap hanging on by threads. "Mitch..." She whined. 

"I'm so sorry, baby. I didn't mean to. I got carried away. You were just doing everything I love... being the exact kind of girl that I like." 

"What? A White House intern who lets you nut on her dress?" Willa asked with playful indignation. 

Mitch laughed loudly again, but this time leaned forward, grabbing her chin and pulling her towards him for a deep kiss. He could taste himself on her tongue, but he didn't really care when he felt her hands grip his thighs, and a moan vibrate against his mouth. "No," He whispered, staring at her in the eyes as he broke the kiss. "A very naughty girl."

Willa swallowed thickly. Every single thing Mitch did was sexy, and he knew how to get her to not be angry with him much too easily. She remembered her dress, as she sunk her butt against the back of her heels again, still kneeling in the footwell of the limousine. "It looks like cum, baby. What are we going to do?"

"The one time I don't wear a jacket to one of these things that I can give to you to cover up that stain."

"I think only another stain would cover this stain, M." She narrowed her eyes at her. 

It sparked an idea in Mitch. He grabbed his wine glass, and poured the burgundy contents down Willa's front. "Now you can't see it."

Her mouth was wide open and her hands were hanging in the air in tiny fists. She was furious. "Are. You. Insane?!" 

Mitch processed what he had just done once he got a look at Willa and how angry she was. "That... may not have been my best idea."

Willa crawled to the front of the limo, knocked on the partition and waited for it to roll down. "Yes, Ma'am?" The driver glanced behind him. 

"Turn around. We're not going to the party, yet." Willa shot a look at Mitch, who grimaced in the back. "I have to go home and change, someone spilled wine on my dress." 

"Yes, ma'am." The partition rolled back up, and Willa made her way back to Mitch. 

"I'm sorry, baby." He handed her a box of tissues and the compact mirror from her clutch, and Willa began to wipe the lipstick off her face. Mitch had tucked himself back in, and now he simply sat next to her, silently remorseful. 

Willa smoothed as much of her hair down as she could, and wiped any red smudges from her face. She picked the drying cum off of her neck and chest and sighed, garnering Mitch's attention. "Here's the plan."

Mitch cut her off. "We go home and I eat you out until I pass out to make up for ruining your dress in so many ways." 

"No, that's tomorrow's penitence." She told him, a hint of playful mischief in her voice. Mitch lifted his head when he heard her tone. "We go home, you fuck me so hard and so fast until I come so much that I see stars, I change, we get back in this stupid limo with our pervert driver, and go to the party. I get drunk. You take advantage of me and fuck me when we get home, then tomorrow you find a dry cleaner, in a different neighborhood, who we will never see again, and you see if they can save my dress."

Mitch grinned and nodded. He was pretty sure he was getting off easy with this barely there punishment. "Whatever you want, baby."


	37. Day 192

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch, Beth, Steven and Willa travel to the East End of Long Island for a weekend of racing and reunions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OY. Okay, so this is an important chapter for a couple of reasons. In the books, Mitch’s alias is Mitch Kruse and he does run a technology consulting company that is an international business, so it was only a matter of time before I included that in this story. Also in the books, Mitch’s codename becomes ‘Ironman’ because he has won or come in the top three of the famous Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, each time he’s run it. This is sort of leading towards that.

_"Mitch, you're going to have to convince anyone in your life that you see often enough, to call you Kruse from now on. Even your brother._ "

"Are you going to give me a reason as to why that I can tell him? Cause I don't think he knows what being sheep dipped is."

" _Not my job, Rapp_." Irene shrugged off the responsibility.

"Kinda feels like that's exactly your job." Mitch replied indignantly.

Irene ignored him, as per usual. " _It's for his safety though, so figure it out_."

"Yes, Ma'am." Mitch shook his head, and went to go hang up the call. 

" _Oh, and Mitch_..." 

"Yea?"

" _Good luck in your race tomorrow. It's your first triathlon, right_?" 

"Since college at least."

" _Knock 'em dead, R-Kruse_."

Mitch rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Ma'am. Have a good weekend." With that, he hung up the call.

* * *

"Oh, I got the email back from the organizer woman." Willa said as she stared down at her iPhone. "She said she changed it, no problem. They just need you to resign the paperwork."

"Thanks for doing that for me, babe." Mitch shot Willa a quick smile, and then looked back at the road in front of him. Willa dropped her phone in the cupholder between them, and placed her hand over Mitch's on the top of the gear shift. He laced his fingers with hers, and pulled her hand up to his lips, peppering her fingers with kisses, until Steven spoke and broke their moment. 

"What do you have to sign?" Mitch rolled his eyes. Steven was probably the nosiest person alive, but at least it offered him the opportunity to start the conversation he had to have with his brother. 

"I have to resign my paperwork for the race."

"Why? Has Willa been forging your signature again?" Steven joked, and Willa turned to look at him, jokingly shrugging as if she had been caught. 

Mitch, on the other hand, was perpetually serious with anyone that wasn't Willa. He cleared his throat, and spoke again. "No. I got a new job, sort of..."

"Okay, I guess we're done with that conversation. You got a new job at the State Department?" 

"Not exactly." Mitch glanced at Willa, hoping to find the answers on how to explain this whole thing to his brother, in her eyes. She sent him a sympathetic frown and squeezed the top of his hand a little tighter against the gear shift. He cleared his throat again, using it as a stalling tactic. "Um, I kind of left the State Department, and started a technology consulting company."

"You.. What the fuck? Do you even own a cellphone?" Steven was annoyed and confused by the sudden development. Every time he felt like him and Mitch were getting close again, and Mitch was opening up and letting him back into his life, he went and pulled something like this. Steven was getting fed up with his older brother's bullshit. 

Mitch rolled his eyes again, and pulled his phone out of the cupholder from under Willa's. "Yes. It's even an iPhone."

"I feel like Willa made you buy that."

Willa grimaced. "Not so much made as suggested..." 

"You're not helping." Mitch scolded, and Willa pretended to zip her lips shut. 

"Do you know anything about computers? Who did you start this company with? Why'd you leave the State Department? Does this mean that you're going to be in New York more often?" 

Mitch glanced back at his younger brother in his rear view mirror, and glared. "Jesus christ, Steve." He sighed. "I know a lot about computers. I started the company by myself. I put half of my money from the trust fund in and Willa invested some as well." That was true, but what Mitch was leaving out was that the CIA then reimbursed the both of them for their money. The company needed to look fully legitimate for Mitch to have a proper working cover from here on out. 

"Why'd you start this company? Especially by yourself, and why didn't you come to me for help or advice or anything? I started a company, Mitch. Dude, you're the fucking worst sometimes, honestly." Steven leaned back in his seat, sulking, and Mitch gripped the steering wheel of the Porsche Panamera, that Willa had bought him as a late birthday present when they got home from Iceland, tighter. Willa tapped her thumb against his hand, trying to calm him, and his grip loosened slightly. 

She decided to step in for him. "Do you remember how we were on assignment a few weeks ago, before we went away to Iceland?" Steven nodded from the backseat. "Well, and you can't tell anyone this, Steve..."

"I know."

Willa nodded. "We were in Tel Aviv with the Secretary of State."

"Isn't that near where one of those bombs almost went off?" Steven asked. 

"Yea, but that has nothing to do with this. Mitch pissed off the wrong people.."

Mitch glanced over at her with a ' _what are you talking about_ ' look on his face. "Sounds about right." Steven snickered from the backseat. Mitch shrugged his hands in the air and rolled his eyes. 

"Well, he kind of had to leave the State Department because of it. His life was being seriously threatened."

"What'd you do?"

"It's classified." Mitch grumbled, rolling his eyes again, and not looking away from the traffic in front of him. 

" _Classified_." Steven grumbled, mockingly, under his breath. 

Willa snickered and continued. "The government set him up with a new identity in the meantime."

"Like Witness Protection?"

Mitch arched his eyebrows at Willa, who flashed him a quick smile. She had woven a pretty convincing web of lies for him. "Sort of. Not as serious, but Mitch had to leave the State Department."

"And I had to change my last name, at least for now."

"What the fuck are you talking about? Legally?"

Mitch bobbed his head back and forth. "Not _legally_ , legally. I guess it depends what your definition of ' _legally_ ' is. Basically, I'm still Mitch Rapp, but I got all new documents, driver's license, birth certificate, social security card, whatever, under the name ' _Mitch Kruse_ '."

"Who the fuck is Mitch Kruse?" Steven asked.

" _Me_. Now, or for a while. Think of it like my WitPro name, Steve."

"Does that make me Steven Kruse? If you and Willa get married, will she become Wilhelmina Rapp or Wilhelmina Kruse?"

Willa arched an eyebrow up at Mitch. She hadn't thought of that. She wanted to be Willa Rapp, not Kruse. Kruse meant nothing to her, but having the last name of ' _Rapp_ ' meant everything. "You're still Steven Rapp. If anyone you don't know comes looking for me, you say you had an older brother named Mitch Rapp, who left on a vacation two years ago and you never heard from again. I never returned, and then you call me or Willa as soon as you can."

"This is serious.... Will people come looking?" 

"Probably not." Mitch answered Steven, who leaned back into his seat once more, thinking about all he had just been told. Mitch turned to Willa and whispered quiet enough that the distracted man in the back couldn't hear. "Rapp. You'd be ' _Rapp_ '." A smile turned her cheeks up, and she cupped her hand over his once more. 

"So, that's why you started a new company and that's why you have to resign your paperwork for the race?" Steven confirmed. 

Mitch nodded. "Yes."

"Think you can keep all of this to yourself and just enjoy spending time with your ' _friend, Mitch Kruse_ ,' instead?" Willa asked, still turned partially in her seat to look at Steven face-to-face. Steven nodded, and Mitch squeezed Willa's hand, a silent thank you for making a difficult conversation that much easier. 

* * *

"So, did they tell you about this Mitch Kruse thing?" Steven asked Beth as they shucked ears of corn over the sink in the kitchen. 

Beth nodded and smiled over at Willa reading on the couch, as Mitch was laying on top of her, completely passed out on her chest, his hands around her body, and his big, hairy feet hanging off over the opposite arm of the couch. She wanted a love as sweet as theirs. "She told me on the way here from the train station after she picked me up. What'd you think?"

"I really want to know what Mitch did, or like, who he pissed off, you know?" 

Beth understood the real reason. Mitch hadn't pissed anyone off, yet, he simply needed a cover to be a successful assassin. He was good with computers, he took International Business in college, he spoke several languages; the tech consulting company was the perfect cover. Mitch could be a business man who traveled to different countries helping to bring new technology to businesses or towns or whatever he needed to make that specific mission work. He needed Mitch Kruse since Mitch Rapp was known by even a handful of people between Langley and The Barn. He needed to not exist in order to be the perfect killing machine. But Steven didn't need to know any of that, so Beth nodded along. 

"Totally. Like, was it some crazy fringe group leader, or like Hezbollah or something scary, or did Mitch just gamble with the wrong Israeli mobster, you know?" Beth tried to throw Steven off of the correct trail. 

Steven laughed. "I hope it's something stupid like the mobster. That'd be funny." Beth smiled at Steven and they shucked in silence for a few more moments, until Steven spoke again. "Do you ever feel like the two of them aren't telling us anything?"

"Well, I'm sure Mitch can start telling you stuff more often now since he doesn't work for the government anymore, but I get why Willa still couldn't." Beth replied, diplomatically. 

Steven shook his head. "I actually feel like Willa tells me more than Mitch does. He just never wants to talk about anything pertaining to him, that doesn't have to do with Will. Not that I mind. I really love Willa, it's just, like, I want to know more about him, you know?"

Beth's heart felt heavy. She was sorry that she had to lie to Steven as well. He was a genuinely kind and sweet man, who always wore his heart on his sleeve. He deserved better than her, Mitch and Willa. "I know." Beth replied, solemnly. 

"Hrngh..." Mitch stirred on Willa's chest and dug his head deeper down towards her stomach. She snickered and put her book down on the back of the couch so that she could run both of her hands through his hair. "What time is it?" He groaned quietly, clutching her crewneck sweatshirt in his fingers. 

Willa smiled and massaged her fingers against his scalp. "Five-ish. Beth and Steve are making dinner, and you really passed out there, my love."

"I'm sorry." Mitch tilted his head up to look at her, drowsy eyes and a sniffly nose. 

"It's okay." Willa snickered. "I like when you fall asleep on me. At least this time you didn't try to choke me to death with your elbow." 

"That was once." Mitch argued with a grin.

"You have put your arm over my neck like at least seven times since we started sleeping together. I think you are trying to kill me." Willa joked. 

Mitch adjusted so that he was laying with his back against the couch and he was no longer laying fully on top of her. She turned on her side and cuddled up against his chest. "Gotta try to kill you in your sleep. Every other time, you'd be able to defend yourself." He smirked and Willa lightly bumped her hand against his forehead. 

"They're talking about you." Willa whispered, directing her eyes up towards the kitchen where Steven and Beth were. 

"Did they think you couldn't hear them? The kitchen is not that far away." Mitch whispered back. 

Willa shrugged, and tucked her leg in between Mitch's. She liked him in Syracuse lacrosse shorts, a white t-shirt and ankle socks. He was relaxed and it made Willa relaxed. "Steve is still curious about the company and 'Mitch Kruse' and all that and then he was saying how you never tell him anything." Mitch sighed, somewhat exasperated. Willa ran her fingers through Mitch's long beard and told him something that he maybe didn't want to hear, but she felt like he needed to know. "I know that it's not like you to open up, but you gotta throw Steve a bone, Mitch. He just wants to be your friend."

"He is my friend. He is arguably my only friend, besides you." Mitch raised his voice just slightly. 

"Okay. But does he know that?"

Mitch buried his head into the cushions and grunted. "I guess not?" His voice came out garbled against the fabric. Willa smiled and leaned over to plant several kisses against his cheek.

"Just if he asks about who you pissed off or something pertaining to the new company, make up a story that will make him feel like you're trusting him with something that no one else is supposed to know, or maybe ask him advice on business stuff every once in a while."

"I was a business major, Will." He glared up at her. 

She smiled and shrugged. "I know that, Grumpy Cat, but it's called trying to connect with your brother... Just play nice and engage him in conversation."

"I am not Grumpy Cat." Mitch said grumpily, a frown plastered on his face.

"I know, so much hairier." She teased.


	38. Day 193

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch, Beth, Steven and Willa travel to the East End of Long Island for a weekend of racing and reunions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins to set up some important and lasting relationships throughout this series. It also harkens back to what I wish could have happened in Chapter Three. A lot of references to that hot tub scene in this, if you wanna flip back for a refresher.

"So, what? We're just supposed to wait at the finish line for six hours for him to cross?" Steven asked anyone who would answer him, grimacing, as he leaned against the trunk of a tree. 

Mitch glared up at his little brother, ceasing his reach for the tip of his toes. "It's not six hours, asshole." Steven grinned, he loved being Mitch's annoying little brother; emphasis on annoying. Getting a rise out of Mitch was like a pastime for Steven. "You've been to races I've run before.. You've even been to triathlons that I've participated in. I finished the last one in two hours and forty minutes, and I plan on beating that time today, so, shut the fuck up. It won't be six hours." 

Willa snickered at their bickering. "Plus we're not just waiting at the finish line the whole time. We'll go down to the bay and watch some of the swimming part, and then we'll go to the finish line and wait for him." Mitch smiled lovingly up at his girlfriend, appreciating her support. She smiled back, appreciating his stretching. 

"We have booze though, right?" Steven asked, eliciting a sigh from his brother, sitting in the dirt.

Willa scrunched up her face and nodded, causing Steve to snicker, and Mitch to look up, only to see Willa grinning innocently back at him. "Champagne and orange juice. The breakfast drink of champions." Beth lifted the cooler bag off the ground, with a smile. 

"Fucking dope." Steven nodded. 

"Wilhelmina?" A familiar, accented voice sounded from a short distance. Everyone's heads snapped up, looking towards where the voice called out from.

"Julian? Is that... Holy shit, hi!" Willa walked towards the handsome, smiling Puerto Rican-American man, who was one of her closest friends at The Barn. She hugged him tight and smiled. It was nice to see his face again. He quietly introduced her to the younger man flanking him, as the others looked on. 

"Who is that?" Steven asked. "Ex-boyfriend?" He looked at Beth, who shook her head. 

"I've never seen him before." 

"Julian Casablancas." Mitch answered his brother's question, while stretching forward to grab the tops of both of his feet. "We know him from work..." He explained, trying to remember what Julian's cover story from Spring Break was.

"What are you doing here? You're not racing, are you?" Willa shook her head, and walked with the two men back towards where Mitch was finishing up his pre-race stretching.

"No, I'm here with-"

That was when Julian saw him. "Mitch." He smiled wide, and Mitch rose to his feet. "Good to see you, my friend." He shook Mitch's hand and Mitch nodded once. He wanted to like Julian, but he could never be too confident. But he was pleasantly surprised when Julian said nothing about Mitch being there with Willa; he thought that may be he was trustworthy after all. 

Steven cleared his throat and Willa jumped in. "Right, um, this is Steven Rapp, Mitch's.. friend," Willa cringed slightly, remembering to not call Steven 'brother' was going to be a chore. "and this is my cousin," Willa turned and looked at Julian, excited to see his reaction. "Beth Hurley..."

Julian looked confused for a mere moment, until his eyes lit up and he nodded with a smirk. "Hurley? As in?" 

"Stan's daughter. Nice to meet you." Beth understood where Julian was from as soon as Willa put special emphasis on her last name. She shook Julian's hand and grinned when he lingered. He was handsome and suave and she liked the way he stared. 

"And this is mi hermano menor, Sebastian." Julian gestured to the younger man behind him, who simply waved and continued staring at Steven. 

"So how do you all know each other?" Steven gesticulated towards Mitch, Willa and Julian, waiting for at least one of them to answer. 

Willa stepped up to the plate. "Mitch and I met Julian overseas through work. It was um, the relief mission in Syria, right?" She had heard Julian's Spring Break cover speech twice and she was certain that the cover was good enough. 

Julian smiled and nodded, hanging his arm over Willa's shoulders, much to Mitch's chagrin. "Do you two work at an NGO as well?" Sebastian asked, finally peeling his eyes off of Steven's figure. 

Mitch shook his head. "State Department. Willa still does, I do not. I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself before. Mitch Kruse, nice to meet you." Mitch leaned in to shake Sebastian's hand, but glanced at Julian when he divulged his new alias. Julian nodded once, understanding what was happening, and decided to steer the conversation into safer territory. 

"I never expected to see you two all the way out here for a triathlon, you training for something?" He nodded at Mitch. 

"Ironman in Hawaii." 

"That doesn't surprise me at all.. Kruse." He snickered for a moment, realizing that he only ever really called Mitch by his last name when he was at The Barn with him. "You running the New York Marathon?" 

"I signed up. I'll run if I'm around for it." He glared at the physical contact between Julian and Willa as he spoke. Willa noticed and broke away, opting to stand near Beth instead. Mitch relaxed as soon as she was untouched. 

"What are you doing out here, Jules?" She asked. 

"Well, with that chemical weapon bombing in Raqqa, I was sent home for a few weeks, and my parents have a summer house in Cutchogue, and I was bored, so I signed up late, and have been training every day since. You out for just the weekend?"

"Yea, we rented a house in Southold through to Tuesday. We were going to have a big barbecue tonight for Mitch, you two should stop by." Steven interjected before Mitch or Willa could stop him. 

"That'd be great." Sebastian replied, and Mitch shot Willa a look. She shrugged gently, not willing to try to retract the offer. She was sure it would be fine. 

"Sí, apparently we will be coming by. We'll bring dessert." Julian flashed a stunning smile at Beth, who melted a little under his handsome gaze. "Would it be okay if Seb hung out with all of you instead of having to spend the whole race alone? My parents did not come with us. They went to the farmer's market in Riverhead instead." 

"We have enough mimosa stuff for Sebastian, right, Beth?" Steven asked. 

"Absolutely." She nodded.

"Estupendo." Julian clapped his hands together. "I'll see you after the race?" He turned and hugged his younger brother. "Mitch, shall we?" 

Mitch nodded once and turned to Willa. She walked off a short distance away from the group with him, while the others chatted with each other. "I don't like this." 

"Don't worry about it, right now, love. Focus on beating him, and everyone else." Willa rubbed her hands up and down the sides of his arms, warming his muscles again slightly. 

Mitch chuckled and shook his head. "Good luck kiss?" 

"Not that you need it." She leaned in, hooking her arms around his neck, and pressed her lips against Mitch's. He picked her up off the ground an inch, holding her in his arms, and leaned into her kiss. He finally broke away after some time, and let Willa's feet touch the dirt again. She grinned up at him. "You are so possessive. I knew that shoulder lean pissed you off." 

"He didn't know you were mine. I didn't like it." Mitch acted like a caveman occasionally, but Willa didn't really mind. She was possessive of him as well. 

"He knows now, I bet." She replied with a smirk. Mitch sighed and rolled his eyes at her, and she left one more kiss on his cheek. "Get first place, and I'll give you the best blow job you've ever had tonight." 

"That's a standard you should not set for me winning races." Mitch grinned. "I'll see you when they are handing me the first place trophy, baby."

"Knock 'em dead." She whispered, as he walked away with Julian. "Not literally, of course." She yelled with a laugh when she saw Mitch simply shake his head at her and keep walking. 

* * *

 

"You sure we can sleep here tonight? I don't want to impose." Julian said, stepping out of the hot tub, and handing Sebastian a towel, as he stepped out after his brother. 

Willa nodded with a smile. "Yea, you guys drove here, and you drank so much. We have the extra bedroom and couches everywhere. You can decide who goes where." 

"Muchas gracias, amiga. Sleep in tomorrow, Seb and I will make breakfast as a thank you." Julian pressed his hand against his heart in gratitude towards his friend. 

Willa shook her head. "You really don't have to do that, Jules." 

Julian held up his hand, not wanting to hear anymore arguments about the matter. "Sí, we do." He turned to Mitch and held out his hand to shake it. Mitch gripped it tightly and smiled, finally coming around to Julian. "Very well done, today, hermano. You did say you were going to get first place. I don't know why we didn't all believe you."

Mitch chuckled. "If you're in town for the Hampton Bays tri in August, maybe you'll beat me then." He released his hand and relaxed his arm back around Willa's shoulders, and the edge of the jacuzzi. 

"Tal vez. Tal vez." Julian smirked. 

Beth rose from the steaming water, and Julian handed her a towel. "I'm getting tired. I'll show you guys where the spare room is."

"Yep, I'm done too." Steven pulled the pant legs of his swim trunks down, as he climbed out after Beth. "I'll grab you guys some clothes of mine and Mitch's to wear."

"Thanks." Sebastian smirked at Steven, and they said their goodnights to Mitch and Willa, walking back inside of the house. 

Mitch turned to Willa and shook his head. "Is it just me, or did it seem like Sebastian and Steven-"

"Were flirting? Or more so, basically about to mount each other in the hot tub in front of all of us. Yea, I noticed that too." Willa snickered. 

Mitch rubbed his wet hand against his eye and smirked. "That's new."

"Not really. I saw him dancing with some dude at the club we went to in the city when we were here for Spring Break." Willa admitted. 

"Seriously?" Mitch was somewhat stunned. "Do you think Steve is gay?"

Willa shrugged. "Maybe. Could be bi, or just not really give a shit about the gender of the people he flirts with or dates." She glanced at Mitch, who was rubbing his fingers through his beard. "Does that bother you?"

He scrunched his face and shook his head. "Not at all, I'm just surprised. I've only ever known him to date or talk about women. Just didn't see this coming." 

"Maybe that's one of the things you can talk to him about." 

"Oh my god. Would you shut up about us bonding? I'll work on it." Mitch grinned at Willa, and pushed her away, through the bubbling water. 

She laughed, and returned his smile, before slowly inching back towards Mitch. He sighed in contentment as her hands connected with the tops of his thighs through the water. "I'm proud of you for coming in first." She whispered, gently massaging her thumbs into his muscles, as she turned to sit on the ledge next to him again. 

"Thanks, baby." 

"You're like The Flash or something." 

"Or something." He grinned, leaning over to place a quick peck on her cheek. He watched her smirk and lick her lips. Her eyes were fixated on him, and he could practically smell the desire coming off of her. Mitch suddenly got deja vu, and shook his head with a smile, remembering back on the last time they were in a hot tub together. 

"What?" She asked, seeing the grin spread across his face. 

Mitch picked his head up to look at her. "Do you remember the only other time we were in a hot tub together?" 

Willa didn't have to think very hard. "Yea, I had just kicked your ass on the mats."

Mitch chuckled. "As I recall it, you were the one with the bloody lip." 

"And you were the one with the bruises on your ribs for the next two weeks." Willa replied, smugly. Mitch shook his head and laughed, dipping into the water a little more, as he felt her hand brush against his side. "Are you sore?" She asked, biting her lower lip, and moving her hands down to his thighs once more. 

Mitch nodded. "A bit." 

"Is the jacuzzi helping?"

Mitch grinned; he knew exactly what she was up to: trying to recreate their last moment in the hot tub at The Barn. "Sort of." He remembered saying the first time she asked that question. 

She grinned back at him. "Here." She leaned against the side of the jacuzzi, and pulled Mitch through the water towards her, pressing his back against her chest. Mitch hooked his hands under her thighs and relaxed against Willa, as she began massaging his quadriceps. He sighed contentedly, as her thumbs kneaded into his sore legs.

A few minutes passed, and Mitch nuzzled his forehead against her cheek. "This is so much better than the last time." 

"Mmmm..." Willa hummed. "I agree."

He turned his head and connected his lips with Willa's. A sloppy and lazy, but hot kiss resulted, and Willa let her hands wander. Mitch let out a quiet sigh, as her fingers slipped under the drawstring waistband of his blue swim trunks. He shut his eyes, and let his left hand hook around the back of Willa's neck, ensuring that she knew how much he enjoyed the feeling of her gently stroking his hardening cock. "Oh fuck, that feels good." He said breathily. 

"Good, just let me take care of you." She whispered in his ear.

Mitch enjoyed her slow strokes for a couple more minutes, thinking about the hot tub at The Barn. "That afternoon at the gym.." Willa hummed in acknowledgment. "I wanted to fucking kiss you so badly in that hot tub. You were gorgeous and sexy and practically naked, and you were touching me, and your lip was all fat and pouty. I wanted to kiss you so bad." Mitch admitted, eyes still shut, head still leaning against Willa's shoulder. 

"Kiss me now." She whispered, in reply. 

A mischievous smile spread across Mitch's face, as he opened his eyes, pulled her hand from his fully erect dick, and guided Willa from behind him, to straddling his lap. He ran his hand under her cascading wet hair, and gripped the back of her neck, bringing her in for a long kiss. He swiped his tongue against her lips, and she opened her mouth, moaning at the feeling of him dominating her tongue. She ran her fingers through his hair, tugging at strands, as he deepened the kiss, and held her tighter against him. She ground down on his erection, and Mitch moaned quietly into their kiss. He broke away for a breath, but the air between them was thick with desire. She gasped in the steam rising between them, and Mitch leaned in for a softer kiss. He began to work his lips down her jaw and neck. His fingers pulled at the knots on her bikini top, untying it completely, and throwing it onto the grass beside the wooden jacuzzi. One hand slipped down the back of her bikini bottom, to seize a fistful of her ass, while the other grabbed at her now exposed breasts, pulling them out of the water just enough for him to suck and kiss and bite her nipples. Willa couldn't stifle her groans. She was more drunk than sober, and she was debatably too relaxed; not really caring that people might be able to hear her if she got even remotely louder. Mitch didn't really care either. He loved the noises she made when he was pleasuring her. They were addicting. He always wanted more. 

Mitch let go of her breasts, and Willa whined quietly, wondering where his hands went off to. She felt them connect with her hips, and she grinned, licking her top left canine, like Mitch was something she wanted to devour. In a way, he was. "You know..." Mitch began, as he found the set of ties to her bathing suit bottoms on her right hip. "that afternoon in the hot tub..." 

"When you wanted to kiss me?" Willa asked, watching him pull apart the strings with ease. 

Mitch nodded, and looked up into Willa's eyes, completely dilated with lust, smirking as he found the ties on her left hip. "I wanted to fuck you, too." Willa whimpered, as soon as the words rolled off his tongue. She heard the smack of wet fabric hitting dry ground, and then felt his fingers rubbing against her now completely naked body.

She brought her fingers down to the drawstring ties keeping his bathing suit up, and she pulled them apart. Mitch shimmied out of his trunks, then threw them over the edge to land on top of her discarded swim suit on the grass. She leaned in, biting and pulling at his ear lobe, eliciting a soft moan from his throat. "Then you should fuck me." She whispered. 

Mitch gripped his rock hard length, and rubbed it against Willa's clit, letting her squirm for a moment. Quiet pleads fell from her lips, begging him to just fuck her already, and Mitch relished in how she sought his permission to be pleasured. "Would you have fucked me then?"

"Probably. You were sexy and I wanted you." She told him. 

"Do you still want me?"

"So fucking badly, baby, please." With that final admittance of desire, Mitch pushed inside of her. 

Willa moaned loudly as he filled her up completely, were walls straining against his thickness. The pain and pressure was momentary, and truly nothing in comparison to the pure ecstasy her body received when he didn't bother to stretch her out or ease his way in. She secretly loved when he simply forced his length, in its entirety inside of her. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she braced her hands against his broad and muscular shoulders. He gripped her hips and began to bounce her up and down on his cock with great ease. The buoyancy of the water made it easy for Mitch to move Willa how he wanted. His arms did most of the work. He simply laid against the edge of the hot tub, watching her breasts bounce in his face, and listening to her whine and whimper every time he pushed her down hard on his dick. 

She leaned back, gripping his wrists to keep her balance, and moaned louder with each thrusts. Her jaw relaxed and her eyes shut tightly, as her hair skimmed the top of the water. Mitch wanted to kiss her beautiful mouth and throat. "Baby, come back." He managed to huff between labored breaths. 

"Nuh uh. You're, ugh... you're hitting me perfectly... ahhh........ like this." 

He chuckled, and licked his lips, satisfied with the knowledge that she was on her way to an orgasm. "This feels good?" He asked a question he already knew the answer to, simply to hear her voice try to fight through her moans. 

"So fucking good. I love your cock so much." Her head remained tilted back, as she spoke into the night sky. 

Mitch wasn't sure if it was being buried deep inside of her, the steam from the jacuzzi water, the words coming out of her mouth, the alcohol, exhaustion from the race, or all of those things wrapped into one, but his head was spinning. He closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the edge of the hot tub. "Fuck, baby, you feel so amazing. Tell me you love my cock again." He panted, feeling himself climb closer to his apex. 

"Oh god.. Yes, Mitch, dig in... right there..." She could barely answer him, as he ground her body down against his throbbing hard on. "I love..." Mitch opened his eyes to see why she couldn't speak anymore. "I love... Oh fuck..." Willa couldn't finish her sentence before he began to convulse in Mitch's lap. Her body spasmed and twitched, and ground down on Mitch's cock to get the last bits of friction needed to finish riding out the wave of her hard orgasm. 

"Fuuuuuck." Mitch breathed out quietly, as he stilled his motions and let her calm down. She took a deep breath and straightened up, not wanting the direct stimulation that the angle allowed for anymore. "That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen you do." Mitch whispered, and Willa sleepily grinned. "You okay for me to keep going?" He checked in before continuing. Willa nodded, wetting her lips and preparing herself for the overstimulation that was sure to happen until he finished too. Mitch pulled out with ease, and went to push back in but was met with great resistance. That orgasm had tightened her muscles in a way that Mitch hadn't experienced before. "This is going to be rough, baby. You sure you're good?"

"Are you close?" She hated to ask that, not wanting to rush him, but she had to know before she consented to something that would probably leave her walking funny until lunch the next day. 

Mitch smiled and nodded. "If I can go a little faster, I promise it'll be quick." Willa nodded in consent and leaned forward, connecting her lips with his, as Mitch forced his way back into her throbbing cunt. 

"Fuck." She moaned into his mouth, her brow furrowed and her lip being bit in mild pain. 

"Tell me to stop if it's too much."

Willa pressed her forehead against his. His pleasure brought her pleasure. She wanted him to finish. "Keep going." She urged him. 

Mitch didn't dare pull all the way out again. He simply thrust up as fast as he could, keeping inside of her impossibly tight walls, dripping wet with her juices. He pressed his forehead back against hers, and breathed in her whimpers and moans. She was like a drug that he could never get enough of. A few more fast thrusts, and he knew he was at his breaking point. His fingers dug into her sides and his eyes fluttered shut. "Oh god.... There you go...." He breathily moaned, as he unraveled, and a healthy load of cum shot into her raw and aching pussy. His grip loosened and his body relaxed. He cooed softly at the feeling of her brushing the wet hair away from his forehead, tucking it behind his ears. He loved how gentle and caring she was with him after sex. "You okay?"

Willa waited for Mitch to open his eyes before nodding with a peaceful smile. "That was some of your best work yet."

"I thought so too..." He smirked. The two of them jumped when a loud explosion sounded off above them. Their heads shot up to the dark night sky, and saw white shimmering light dance across the night sky, then disappear, leaving only a trail of smoke in its place. 

"You're seeing the fireworks too, right? I'm not hallucinating... or was it really that amazing of sex?" She asked, jokingly. 

Mitch chuckled, and watched her face illuminate with the second explosion. "I would like to say that I am just that good, but I think it's just almost the Fourth of July."

"Should we head inside? I'm sure you're exhausted."

Mitch nodded, and frowned slightly when she climbed off of him and out of the hot tub, wrapping her naked body in a towel. "Since we get to sleep in tomorrow, and we don't have to wake up to make breakfast. Can we have sex in the morning too?" 

"Only if I get to ride you like that again." Willa smirked, watching Mitch pick up their discarded clothing from the ground. 

"I literally don't think there would be any other way we could fuck tomorrow. I'm going to be so sore." 

"Come on, champ. Let's go to bed." Willa wrapped herself in his towel, pressing her back against his bare chest, and they stumbled into the house to finally rest. 


	39. Day 204

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willa heads down to DC to speak to Irene about Mansur and Mitch, and Mitch tries to occupy himself without her around.

"No, Irene what I'm saying is that the NSA found photographic ev-"

"How solid was the warrant for this surveillance? Was there even a warrant, Hurley?" Irene cut Willa off. 

"Yes, there was a warrant!" Willa snapped back. 

"FROM TWO MONTHS AGO, AGENT HURLEY!" Irene slammed her hand down on the desk a few times in anger. "Do not raise your voice at me. I am your superior." Irene stood from her desk, trying to gain the physical upper ground from Willa. 

"I am telling you that Mitch doesn't give a shit about your warrants, Director.." Willa continued raising her voice, as she dug her pointer finger into the stained wood grain of Irene's desk in her office. 

"I don't give a shit about what Mitch thinks!" 

Willa paused for a moment, then smacked her open palm against the desk with a frustrated grunt, before backing away and pacing the room. She stopped in her tracks and turned back to Irene, still standing over her desk, face contorted in annoyance and anger, and Willa finally calmed her tone. "He's going to go to Yemen with or without your approval. You're the one who recruited him. I don't know how you didn't expect this to happen."

"So why isn't he here?"

"He didn't even want me to come here for this. I am doing this as a courtesy for you and the Agency, Irene. You know that."

Irene sighed and shook her head, digging her pointer finger into her brow bone, trying to stave off a headache. "Jesus fucking christ, I hate Rapp sometimes." Irene finally sat down in her large black leather desk chair and sulked. 

Willa finally sat back down in the chair on the opposite side of the desk as well and cleared her throat, dislodging bits of phlegm that crept up her windpipe when she began yelling. She gripped the end of the arm rests, running her fingers back and forth over the soft leather cushions and brass fasteners. "He's going to go and literally get himself killed if you don't provide us with some help."

"Us?" Irene caught a key word in Willa's last sentence. 

"You think I'd ever let him do this alone? I'm going with him, whether you approve it or not. I don't really care if I lose my job, that'd be better than losing him." 

Irene groaned, rubbing her hand against her forehead and shaking her head. "You two are just a match made in heaven, aren't you?"

Willa knew she shouldn't be so insubordinate to her superiors, but Mitch had simply rubbed off on her a little too much. She couldn't help herself. "I like to think so." She replied with a smug grin. 

Irene rolled her eyes and swiveled in her chair for a moment. Her personal relationship with Willa, and her affection and unconditional support of Mitch, had finally come back to bite her. "Let me talk to Stansfield... I'll see if we can get an updated warrant, and then we'll start assembling a plan and a team."

Willa sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Thank you, Ma'am."

"Let me see the photos again." Irene held out her hand and waited for Willa to pick the file off of the chair next to her. The Director of Counterterrorism thumbed through the surveillance footage in the manilla folder and then handed it back to Willa. "You can't abuse the NSA's resources and your personal connections again, Hurley. It's going to land you in a heap of shit one day, that even I can't get you out of." 

Willa nodded once. "I know, Ma'am. This seemed like the right cause to call in my favor's for though."

"It's going to take me a couple of days, but once we get the green light, this shit will happen quickly. Be ready to leave at a moment's notice."

"We're ready. Don't worry."

"Where is Mitch anyway?" Irene asked while opening her top desk drawer, looking for her bottle of Aspirin. 

"Home. I'm heading back up now." 

"Have you talked to Stan at all, Willa?"

"No, Ma'am, and I would appreciate it if you didn't put him on this op. I have nothing to say to him." 

"You'll get the team you get, Hurley. I'll see what I can do though." Irene tossed the pills back in her mouth and chugged water. "Alright, close the door behind you, and stay by your phone. I'll see you when you get back."

Willa smirked, nodded her head, and slipped out of Irene's office. She walked through cubicles on Irene's floor, her heels clanking against the marble below, and looked through her purse for her phone. She dialed Mitch's number as she got on the elevator. It rang and rang with no answer. Willa called again, as she approached her BMW in the parking garage. Still no answer. She threw her bag on the passenger seat, locked the doors, and turned the key in the ignition, allowing the car to come to life. 

Willa stared at the sparse conversation open on her screen, mostly about groceries and screenshots of Mitch's text conversations with Steven. She pressed her fingers against the keyboard, composing a message before dropping her phone in the cupholder and zipping out of the parking structure to head back up to New York. 

" _I swear, if you left already, I will track your ass down and kill you before you can even leave US airspace_."

* * *

"Mitch?" Willa dropped her keys on the hook near the front door, and looked around the kitchen, living room and dining room, as she closed the front door of their apartment behind her. No response. She strutted over to the glass patio door, and glanced outside. He wasn't out there either. She hadn't heard from him at all since she left for DC before the sun even rose that morning. 

"Baby?" She poked her head into the office and saw nothing but darkness. She sighed.

She pulled her black pumps off her feet as she approached the spiral staircase that led to the second floor of their apartment. Her blood pressure rose, as she called out his name again, but heard no reply. They knew where Mansur was. They had found and confirmed with clear photographic evidence that it was him yesterday, and Mitch was itching to just get it all over with already. But they hadn't cleared the proper government channels yet, causing Willa to go down to DC to put pressure on Irene and Tom Stansfield to get them to Yemen quicker. 

However, it was exactly like Mitch to disappear and take matters into his own hands. It wouldn't even be the tenth time that he had done it since she knew him. Her concern grew greater as she slipped into their bedroom and called out his name again, only to be met with silence again. "Shit." She dialed his number again, as she checked the adjoining master bathroom and closet, only to finally hear vibrating coming from the bed. She moved the sheets around and found his iPhone. "Incoming Call From W..." was all his screen read. Willa glanced around for anymore signs of him. Just because his phone was there did not mean that he was. In fact, it was a safe bet that he and his phone would not be in the same place ever. The line kept ringing as she walked back into the hall and opened the door to their home gym. 

Warm light, quiet rap music and the sounds of grunting and metal clanking filled the soundproofed room. Mitch was too in the zone to realize that Willa was watching him from the door. She sighed in relief. He hadn't left without her. She quietly watched him for a few minutes as he pounded combination punches to an inch of his old Everlast punching bags life. She licked her lips, as she took him in: hair shiny with grease, his muscles rippling and glistening with sweat, his veins bulging in his neck and shoulders and arms, his feet planted firmly on the mat below the bag, and his sweatpants slung low on his hips.

She remembered the good old days of them constantly sparring and training together at The Barn. At a certain point in their unique courtship, their sparring and fighting and training became part of their flirting and teasing. The violence that they inflicted on one another, to prepare to defend themselves against those who actually wanted to hurt them, became a part of their love language. She missed it. It had been a while since they had done it since Mitch had been building his new business and trying to involve his brother in his life more. 

Willa snuck up behind Mitch, waited for him to throw a knee at the bag, and she swept his remaining leg out from under him. Mitch hit the soft mat with a hard thud, and immediately went into instinctual overdrive. His logical brain shut off the moment his adrenaline kicked in, and he bounced up to his feet, and without really looking, threw a left hook at the person who had just attacked him. Willa was always just a half a second faster than him, and she managed to successfully duck out of the way. She took a step back, unsure as to how she hadn't predicted that reaction from him, and watched the realization of who was standing in front of him, overtake his features. His fists slowly dropped from his jaw and his eyes widened. 

"Oh shit, oh shit. I'm sorry, baby. You just surprised me." Mitch stepped forward and rubbed her blazer-covered arms with his sweaty, gloved hands. 

Willa laughed and shook her head, leaning up to peck him on the lips, then quickly shoved him back a couple of steps. Mitch went from surprise to amusement in mere seconds. A playful grin spread across his face as he watched her strip her gray blazer off and throw it towards one of the chairs by the wall. They put their fists up to protect their faces and Mitch snickered as he watched his girlfriend bouncing on the balls of her feet in a navy blue wrap dress. He enjoyed the knowledge that she could kick ass in any piece of clothing. 

"Bring it on, slugger. You won't get me again." Mitch beckoned her forward with a wiggle of his fingers, and she grinned. 

"Won't I though?" She taunted him, before taking a step forward and trying to jab at his ribs. Mitch blocked and took a southpaw stance. She saw the right jabs coming first, as they always did with that particular strategy, and she dodged them, smacking his hands away with open palms or simply ducking out of the way again. The next step would be a left cross right hook, but the tricky thing about Mitch, which she loved, was that he was ambidextrous. It took her months to figure that out, and it took him weeks to finally realize that she had worked out his secret. He switched up to an orthodox stance and took a right cross left hook swing at her. He connected with her jaw and smirked as she stumbled back a few steps. 

Willa licked at the inside of her cheek and returned his grin as he hadn't drawn a speck of blood from her. "That the best you got?"

"At least I'm the one connecting, baby. You're getting soft in your cozy New York life." Mitch verbally hit below the belt, and Willa scoffed. 

She charged him, wrapping her arms around his hips, her shoulder connected to his pelvis, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes against the mat once more. A slurry of jabs and dodges occurred as Willa straddled Mitch to the floor. He quickly got the upperhand and flipped her onto her back, pinning her hands above her head, and hovering over her, his beaten up knees digging into the cushioned floor below them. "You totally let me win that one, didn't you?" Willa smirked, bit her lower lip and nodded, then connected her shin and knee with his groin, gently rubbing her leg back and forth against his dick. "Oh fuck... I missed you too, baby." Mitch relaxed into her touch and leaned down to tuck her lips between his. 

"I was worried that you had left for a minute there when I got home." Willa finally admitted as Mitch rolled onto his back next to her. She snuggled up next to him and began palming his growing erection over his shorts. 

He laid on the floor, his eyes closed and a completely content look on his face, as he enjoyed the feeling of her touching him. "I promised you I wouldn't, so I'm here, and fuck am I happy to be here right now." He mumbled as she flipped her leg over his torso and began to straddle him. 

"Tell me about your day." She leaned down and kissed him softly, smirking as she pulled away and began rubbing her clothed heat against his thick cock. 

Mitch let out a heavy breath, his hands sneaking up underneath the bottom of her dress and up her thighs, making sure she wouldn't leave or stop her lustful rubbing. "Um....." He let out a deep breath and glanced up at her, to see her laugh softly. He loved her laugh. He tried to focus. "I slept a little after you left. Woke up around eight... ugh... mmm... okay, um..." His heart rate rose and Willa could feel it under her hands. She continued rubbing up against him, trying to suppress her own moans and whines. "Breakfast, drove to the gun range in Brooklyn around half past eight..." He paused and rolled his head back against the soft mat, parting his lips to let a strained groan escape. 

"How was the gun range?" She asked, enjoying watching him try with everything in him to continue his story regardless of her grinding down on him and his throbbing length. 

"Shot off.. enough rounds that I'm pretty sure I made everyone else at the range uncomfortable." Mitch stared at Willa, wetting and pursing her lips, over and over, trying to keep her cool. 

"They all think you're gonna end up on the six o'clock news having perpetrated a mass murder?" She joked, and Mitch managed to snicker. 

"Probably." 

"I miss watching you shoot." Willa leaned down and whispered in his ear before pulling his earlobe in between her teeth and tugging. 

Two could play at this game. Mitch thrust up while holding Willa's legs down; they moaned in loud unison at the more intense friction. "I miss you watching me." He flirted back with her. 

She loved the oddities of their union. "What.. mmm.. else did you do today?" 

"Are you ever going to let me get inside of you?" He ignored her question, he was growing close and he wanted to know if he should be prepared to cum all over his own stomach. Willa enjoyed the power. She shook her head and ground down against him, another synchronized moan escaping their lips. "Fine.." Mitch pulled one of his hands from its firm grip around her leg, and wrapped it around her chin, making sure her gaze was fixed on him. "If you aren't going to let me cum inside of you, you are sure as fuck going to get spanked later." 

"Promise?"  

"Mmmm... A little faster... Oh god, just like that." Mitch directed her, his hand moving from her jaw to her neck. 

Willa used his muscular arm as a means to steady herself, as she quickened her pace against his hard on. She began to whimper and move erratically and Mitch felt his orgasm working its way to it's peak as well. He squeezed a little tighter around her throat, and watched her head dip back. His hips worked against hers, in his unrelenting search for release. His rhythm was full of desperation and urgency. Her body began to tremble, and then she devolved into a fit of shakes, as he continued his rhythm, pulling her down and keeping her in place with his hand on her thigh. Her chest rose and fell as she frantically tried to catch her breath, and Mitch loosened his grip around her neck. But she wasn't having it. He practically came right then, when he saw her hands catch his wrist to bring his fingers back around her throat. She ground down hard one last time, wincing at her own overstimulation, and Mitch came undone. He felt his pelvis and hips become coated in his hot seed, and he sighed. He was just glad it was out of him. 

"Come on.." Willa began to stand up to bring him, assumedly, into the shower to clean off, but Mitch didn't care as much as he thought he would. 

He grabbed her wrist and kept her against him, instead shifting her to lay on the floor next to him. "Nah, I don't mind, and I think my legs need a few minutes to recover." He smiled when she nuzzled against his bicep and massaged her fingers into his bare chest. "Where were we?"

Willa stared blankly at his chin, trying to remember what they were talking about before they got carried away trying to reconnect after spending most of the day apart. "Um.. I think you were convincing people you were a mass murderer in training."

Mitch chuckled and tucked a piece of hair behind Willa's ear, before resting his hand on her hip. "Right, so gun range, I came back here to change my clothes and then I ran the entire perimeter of Central Park-"

"What is that, six miles?" 

"Give or take, but I also ran up from the apartment and back, so it was about fifteen. Maybe a little less. Then I got lunch with Steve." 

"How was that?" Willa asked, moving her hands up to stroke through Mitch's beard, while he spoke. 

Mitch sighed loudly. "He yelled at me about a few things. What's new?" He rolled his eyes and looked agitated.

"Did you talk to him about business stuff?" 

Mitch lightly bobbed his head back and forth against the floor. "Sort of. I told him that Kruse Consulting got a contract and that I would be out of the country for a few days, and you were coming with me, and that I'd tell all about it when we got back." 

"He bought that?" Willa looked sympathetically at her beautiful boyfriend. 

He looked thoroughly exasperated. "Who cares?" Willa didn't have a reply, so Mitch kept talking. "Then I came back here, tried watching some TV, but instead I felt like I was losing my mind. I almost called you about six times throughout all of this."

"Almost book any plane tickets?" Willa teased him. 

"Almost.... but I didn't." Willa snickered, and pushed her fingers through his sweaty hair, thumbing his forehead. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his cheek, and he squeezed her hip tighter. "I started some circuit training so I wouldn't lose my shit. Lunges through the apartment, two-hundred pull ups, three-hundred push ups, some knife throwing."

"Still antsy?" Willa interjected. 

Mitch nodded. "I have too much energy when you're gone." 

Willa laughed, enjoying what Mitch was implying. "How long have you been at this?" She pointed up at the punching bag, finally hanging still towards the other end of the room. 

Mitch grabbed Willa's wrist and looked at her watch. "About an hour."

"Your hands okay, baby?" She pouted and picked his right one off of her hip to press her lips gently against his knuckles. "We should ice them." She finally began to get up. "Come on, let's shower and then you ice them while I order us dinner."

Mitch didn't argue this time because she was already completely up on her feet, hovering above him. He followed her to their bathroom, peeling his sticky shorts and boxer briefs off as he walked through their bedroom, and simply dropping them on the floor. "How'd the meeting go? I'm assuming you wouldn't have come home if you hadn't gotten your way." 

Willa laughed as she turned on the shower and felt Mitch wrap his arms around her waist to untie her dress. She nuzzled her head against the crook of his neck, and allowed him to undress her fully before the two of them got in the shower together. He grabbed the body wash first, and began scrubbing at his stomach and pelvis with a soapy washcloth. 

"There was a fair amount of yelling, but my guess is before Friday, we'll be on a plane."

"Is she sticking us with a team or is it just the two of us?" Mitch asked, watching her lather shampoo into her tresses. 

Willa stalled for a moment. "Um... I think maybe a team, I don't know yet. Could be Seals or something, or just Stan.. or I don't really know." She shrugged. 

"You asked for a team, didn't you?" Willa dropped her eyes down to his long toes. "Willa!" He scoffed and groaned, shrugging his hands in front of him. "God damnit."

Willa cut him off to defend herself. "I know you don't like.. I know...." She sighed. "With what you've been talking about, the chance to wipe out the whole cell, anyone who is there, judge, jury, executioner.. I don't know that that's something you and I can accomplish just between the two of us, at least without one of us also getting killed."

"Yea, but we probably won't even be able to do it if we're being babysat by a bunch of Navy fucking Seals, Will." Mitch was pissed. He dropped the washcloth to the floor and pushed passed Willa to exit the shower.

She grabbed him before he could. "Mitch.. stop." She tugged him back in front of her, and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry that I went behind your back with that, but I did what I thought was right, and what I thought was going to keep you alive. I promise, we'll get as many as we can."

"The best way to stop the Bahji is to actually stop the Bahji." Mitch reminded her of what he genuinely believed. To a normal person, Mitch would sound like as much of a zealot as the people he was trying to erase from existence, but to Willa, he sounded like someone who knew how to get a job done, and make sure he'd never have to repeat that particular job again. "They have raped, tortured, sold, killed thousands of people, Willa. Those kinds of people deserve to die in the worst ways imaginable." 

Willa nodded her head and cupped his cheeks in her hands. "I know, baby." She whispered. "It's going to stop with us. I promise." 


	40. Day 207

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Willa get sent off to Yemen where the Bahji terror cell has gone underground, after losing their compound in Lebanon. They meet up with the United States Navy Seal Team that has been assigned to help them, and begin to put their plan in motion.

Mitch glanced over at Willa when he saw her palm connect with her mouth. He then heard the groaning sounds that accompanied her yawns. He spoke lowly, while gently stroking her cheek. "Just sleep already, baby. It'll be hours before we make it to Aden. We don't both need to be awake." 

Willa shook her head slowly against his chest, her fingers curling against his shirt a little more, as she yawned again. "What if something happens?"

"I'll wake you up." She groaned quietly, and Mitch caught the eye of the driver in the rear view mirror. He sent the man a lopsided smile and nodded. "You haven't slept in over twenty-four hours, W. Just sleep."

"You haven't slept in twenty-four hours either."

"I'm fine. Sleep. It'll be okay." Mitch waited for Willa to protest further, but she didn't. He glanced down, pulling away the lavender fabric of her hijab, and smiled. He didn't have to sleep if he could stay up and watch her look peaceful and rested. 

* * *

"M, wake up. we're almost there and it's starting to get closer to dawn." Willa gently jostled Mitch, but he didn't stir. She felt bad. She understood his exhaustion, and she wanted to let him sleep longer, but it was time. "My love, come on. Wake up." 

"I'm awake." He groaned with his eyes still shut. "...That feels nice."

Willa snickered and smiled. "Good, more of that when you wake up and we get to sleep at the safehouse tonight." She stopped running her fingers through his hair, and a small whine escaped from his lips. 

"How much farther? Mitch asked Willa, finally sitting up straight. 

Willa adjusted her hijab, so that it covered more of her face, and pulled her sleeves down to cover more of her wrists and hands. "Hassan said that we would be entering Aden city limits in about twenty minutes."

"Mataa tushruq alshums?" Mitch asked Hassan, the brother of the Saudi CIA operative who had helped to smuggle them over the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni border, when the sun was due to rise. 

"Fi thlathyn daqiqatan." Hassan answered to his backseat passengers, some concern evident in his tone. 

"So we have twenty minutes until we get to Aden and thirty minutes until the sun rises." Mitch glanced over at Willa. "Are we going to be at the safehouse before we completely lose the cover of darkness?" 

Willa glanced at the map in her hands, squinting to see in the black night. "We'll be cutting it close, I think, but we should make it." 

* * *

"Shukraan, sadiqaa." Willa clasped Hassan's hand in both of hers, through the open driver's side window, and bowed her head. 

Hassan smiled at Willa's gratitude and nodded back to her. "Takun amina."

"You be safe, too, Hassan." She smiled. 

Mitch looked up at the light blue sky above, and grew antsy. "As-salamu alaykum." He nodded to the young man who aided them in their journey, as Willa retreated back to Mitch's side. 

"Wa'alaykumu as-salām." Hassan responded, with a wave, rolled his window up, and drove off.

"Which one?" Mitch glanced around at the buildings, eyeing the early morning people, who were beginning to meander out onto the streets. It didn't matter how traditionally Willa dressed, how accurately she wrapped her hijab, or how long and dark Mitch's beard was, they still stuck out, at the very least as strangers, in the small city of Aden. He wanted to get inside. 

"That one." She pointed down an alleyway up ahead. Mitch picked up their duffle bags and walked behind her, constantly checking his six for any curious followers. He stopped in front of a low, steel door and checked over his shoulders as Willa knocked. The door opened enough to see a young, handsome and chiseled young man. "Marhaba." Willa bowed her head for a moment. 

"Marhaba." The young man's Yemeni accent was impeccable. Willa worried for a moment that they had knocked on the wrong door. 

"Hal 'ant 'akhdar?" She asked, invoking the agreed upon codeword. 

The young man nodded and smiled, finally opening the door further. "We were worried that you weren't going to make it." 

"We were a little later crossing the border than we should have been, but we're here." She paused, as the young man closed the door and locked the several locks and safeguards behind Mitch, then began climbing the stairs. "I'm Willa, this is Mitch." 

"We heard all about the two of you from Director Kennedy and Agent Hurley. I'm Cal, it's nice to meet you both." He flashed them a beam, as he glanced behind him. "It was them!" He shouted, as he made it to the top of the stairs, and stepped out of the way. 

Willa's eyes widened slightly as seven other sleepy looking men stared back at her and Mitch. She began to undo her hijab, as one of the largest and oldest looking men approached, while the others quietly conversed behind him. "United States Navy Captain Scott Coleman, leader of this SEAL Team Six. You must be Agent Hurley." He held out his hand for Willa to shake. 

"Nice to meet you, Captain Coleman." Willa shook his brawny hand. 

"Kruse, right?" Coleman extended his hand past Willa, towards Mitch. Mitch simply nodded, and firmly grasped his hand. "Agent Hurley said you two are the best there is. We're excited to get underway and get back home." 

"Us as well, Captain." Willa nodded, examining the faces in the room, staring back at her. 

"Just Coleman is fine. There are two cots in the last room to the left there, if you wanna put your things down. We can get started on introductions now, or you both can rest and clean up for a bit. Nothing goes down until tomorrow anyway."

Mitch shook his head, and gently placed the three bags on the floor, by the wall. "Why don't we go through it all now, so we can just rest until tomorrow then?"

Coleman nodded once and turned to look at his team. "We go by Green-number. I'm Green Leader One, or Green One." He began pointing around the room. "Sean, there, is my right hand, and he's Green Two. Petey is Green Three, he's the best breacher in the business. Billy is Green Four, our resident bombs expert. Frank is Green Five, and basically the living embodiment of The Punisher, but he takes orders well, and Jose is Green Six. We will be the ones accompanying you on the mission."

"The other two?" Mitch clocked the man that they had already met, and a man with shaggy, dirty blonde hair, flossing on a dingy couch in the center of the room. 

"I guess you already met Cal, he's Green Eight. Cal is, besides me and Sean, the only one who speaks Arabic, and he's from here-"

"I'm from Cleveland, you asshole. My parents are from here." Cal interjected, annoyedly. 

"Well, no offense, Callie, but you look the part, so you're driving the bus." Coleman's number two, Sean, spoke up, taunting Cal. 

"Bus?" Willa spoke up, her eyebrow quirked up, surprised at their lack of subtlety. 

"It's a van, like a work van. It'll work out." Coleman answered. "Cal and John, who is Green Seven, are on ex-fil, to get us out of the compound tomorrow night." 

Mitch smirked at Willa, then looked back at Coleman. "So, what's the plan?" 

Coleman nodded, and gestured for them to follow him over to what looked like a delapidated dining table, on the other side of the room. He spread his hands over the map that was laid out, and pointed to the street that they were on currently. "We're here." He ran his pointer finger a few blocks to the west. "The Bahji compound is over here. We got the go-ahead to point and click from Director Stansfield, but, uh, I like to run cleaner ops. We're aiming for 2300 hours, tomorrow night, geared up and ready to go. 0100 hours, we make our way over to the compound by van. We stop at this intersection and take the rest by foot." Coleman's head was down, and he missed every knowing and smug glance exchanged between Willa and Mitch. "The intel says that Mansur sleeps on the top floor of the compound, so we need to breach the main building, eliminate the target and anyone else who gets in the way, get data, burn the compound down to remove any trace of us, and get out. No fingerprints, no footprints, no trace of us." Coleman finally looked up at the two agents leaning over the table. "Any thoughts?"

Mitch licked the smile off of his lips. "I like the part about burning the compound down." 

"And the data extraction. I didn't think of that. That's a good idea." Willa interjected, and Mitch nodded. 

Coleman narrowed his eyes and glanced at his men behind him, pleased that they had concerned looks on their faces, as well. He was about to ask about the rest of the plan, when Mitch spoke again. "How are you going to burn down the building? C4?" 

Green Two rose to his feet and approached the table. "Cal has been filling gas cans. It's best if it looks like an accident."

"Agreed." Mitch nodded, tugging and stroking at his long beard. 

"Why do I feel like these spooks are about to fuck with us?" Mitch heard either Green Three or Green Four say in the background. 

"Because they're fucking spooks." Green Five grumbled in reply. 

Mitch couldn't contain his glee any longer. "It's a good plan, Captain, but Agent Hurley and I were thinking of going a different way."

"Who fucking cares?" Green Five rose to his feet, agitated at the two people who came in and disrespected his superior. "Spooks just think that we're able to get in and get out and they point and we shoot and it's as easy as that shit, but it's not. Fuck that." 

"Sit down, Frank." Coleman glared behind him. "They are technically in charge here."

"CIA spooks pull rank over us measly Naval officers." Green Two muttered, resentfully. 

"Listen, boys, we're not trying to step on toes, or fuck anyone's shit up." Willa finally intervened. "And we're certainly not just pointing at what we want you to shoot.... We aren't those kinds of 'spooks'." She paused to smirk and make air quotes with her fingers. "This is the second time that Mitch has managed to get in with these guys. No one knows them better than him. We have a plan, it's not better or worse, it's just different, and it won't put anyone in any more danger than they were already in."

"His fucking smirk doesn't make me feel like I'm in less danger." Green Five commented about Mitch.

Mitch snickered and shook his head. "I'm just looking forward to Mansur not breathing anymore." Coleman raised his eyebrows and cringed, at Mitch's nonchalance. Mitch didn't even notice. "You all got the point-and-click order because Agent Hurley fought hard to get it. We are going to use it. This isn't a mission where a low casualty count is acceptable."

Green Two interjected. "No offense, spook, but the higher their casualties, the higher the chance of our own. Why should we go out of our way to kill them all?"

"None of the men at that compound are innocent. We have painstakingly combed through intelligence reports, pictures, interrogations, all of it, and matched each man who has walked in and out of that main building in the past month with a name or an alias on the terror watch list and FBI's Most Wanted list. They all deserve to die. They have all done terrible things." Willa glanced around at the now silent room, as she spoke. "The Bahji killed twenty-three people on a Jordanian beach," Willa glanced at Mitch, who had his head down, staring at the map under his hands on the table. "forty-eight people in a Beirut car bombing, twelve in a truck attack in Rome, and thousands more in some of the most brutal ways you can imagine. We will be doing the world a justice by ending their reign of terror."

The SEALs quieted down completely with Willa's speech, and Coleman nodded. "So, what's the plan?"

* * *

"Are the rumors true?" Cal asked, as he walked slowly next to Willa. 

"What rumors?" Willa asked, while adjusting the light blue burqa over her shoulders. 

Cal glanced over at her veil, then watched Mitch perusing the fruit carts and speaking to the local merchants. "You don't have to be in the intelligence community to have heard about what happened in Rome. I heard that it was two young CIA agents who started wiping out Bahji members." Cal stopped when Willa stopped, and he pretended to restrap his sandal. "Was it the two of you? Half the team thinks it was."

Willa shrugged, but then realized he could not see the gesture clearly through her heavy shrouding. "What do the half that believe it was us think about that?"

"That they would be much more comfortable following two badasses into combat, then just some regular spooks that got put in the field."

Willa began walking again when Mitch approached a rug vendor, and began flashing around wads of folded up, green dollar bills. Cal noticed that he was getting the attention that he wanted. "What do you think?" Willa asked Cal. 

Cal smirked and snickered. "I think your boy here is kind of crazy, and that's how the guy in Rome was described to be, so I think it was the two of you."

Willa hummed, like she was mulling over what Green Eight had told her. "And what'd you hear about the woman?"

"That she flew the Chinook into the Meds herself to save the guy."

"Romantic," Willa chuckled. "but probably an exaggeration."

"Did he just buy a rug?" Cal got distracted. 

"I think he just bought five, actually." Willa corrected him. 

"Tell me how this works again?" Cal asked, as he rubbed his thumb against a fig, that he just bought from a fruit cart, and handed one to Willa, who pulled it under her veil. 

"The Bahji are notorious for K and R-"

"Kidnapping and ransom?" Cal clarified.

"Yep. It's a major way that they fund their operation. An American businessman, flashing his cash around the streets of Aden... it'll be too enticing for them not to notice and way too promising for them to pass up."

"So, Agent Kruse just keeps throwing money at the vendors until he gets snatched?"

"Unfortunately, that's the plan." Willa clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. 

"He's gonna get us all killed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Admittedly, I was clearly watching The Punisher on Netflix when I was writing this chapter. Micro in all his wonderful spooky glory really made me want to use that term to excess. I'm not sorry.


	41. Day 209 (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch begins to enact his plan, which sets him on a collision course with the man that killed his fianceé.

"So, what are you going to buy today?" Willa asked, her elbow propping her body up, and her head resting in her hand, while she stared down at Mitch. 

He snickered, and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "I have no idea. Rugs? Do you want some fabric for... something?" 

Willa laughed quietly, and smiled. "I guess if you pick something nice.... No, I have no idea what I'd do with yards of fabric."

Mitch snickered and shook his head. He pulled Willa's hand off of his chest and brought it up to his lips, placing small, warm kisses against her fingers. He rested it back on his body and went back to simply staring at her adoringly. Willa enjoyed the peaceful silence and loving glances. It was easy to forget where they were when he looked at her like that. The sun was hitting his face with just the right amount of morning light, and his skin was slightly dewy and sweaty from the humid Yemeni heat. She loved the way that his rough hands felt, as they rubbed back and forth on her arm that rested across his bare chest. She simply loved him. 

"What are you thinking about?" Mitch rubbed his fingers across her cheek, and tilted his head to the side, against the lumpy pillow below him. 

Willa shrugged slightly, and exhaled loudly. "Just kind of hard to believe that we're sitting around, waiting for you to get abducted by a bunch of terrorists, and yet, I'm laying in bed with you, thinking about how handsome and sweet you are and how wonderful it was to wake up in your arms this morning... and I guess, I'm just struggling with the dichotomy of it all."

Mitch nodded, reached up, and brought Willa's head down to rest of his muscular chest. He ran his fingers through her hair and rubbed her scalp, before leaning forward and planting a few kisses on her temple. "You worried?"

Willa sat up slightly again. "A little. I mean, you're good at what you do, and they're good at what they do," She pointed out towards the rest of the house, where the Seals were mulling about, beginning their mornings. "and I'm good... at everything," She paused to grin, and Mitch snickered. "but good only takes you so far when some crazy guy points a gun against your forehead."

Mitch sighed and pursed his lips, finally breaking his eye contact with Willa, and opting to stare down at her fingers, gently raking through his chest hair. "I know..." He muttered, before clearing his throat quietly. "It'll be fine though. I've come face-to-face with the Bahji before, and I'm still here." He glanced back up at Willa, and forced a smile. "And I didn't have you with me last time. You're the best sniper I've ever seen, Will. I'll be okay as long as your eye is behind the scope and your finger is hovering over the trigger."

Willa nodded, silent in her contemplation. She rested her head against his chest once more, and shut her eyes. A few minutes passed with only the sound of Mitch's heart thumping, against her cheek, filling the room. "I love you." She whispered, breaking the somber quiet. 

Mitch sighed, and ran his fingers through her hair gently for a moment, before speaking. He knew Willa. He knew where her head was at. "I'll be okay, Will. I'm always going to come back to you."  

"Just say it back." She demanded softly.

Mitch nodded, pressed a small kiss against the top of her head, and whispered. "I love you, too."

* * *

"Kruse still flashing his cash and his big dick?" Green Five asked, a hearty chuckle escaping his lips, as the others snickered. 

"Yep." Coleman answered, smirking and shaking his head. 

"What has he bought so far?" Green Six followed up on Five's question, glancing up from his card game with a few of the other SEALs.  

"A few rugs, a lot of random fabrics, salt..."

"Do you think he's getting noticed or is he just wasting his money for nothing?" Green Two asked, as he folded his cards on the table.

"No, he's definitely building a reputation." Willa interjected, shaking her head and brushing her fingers against her mouth. "The merchants are practically throwing themselves at him as he walks by."

"Alright, alright, alright." Green Three drawled. "Let's see if the kids' plan works."

Willa watched the screen of Coleman's laptop, as Cal, the Yemeni-American Seal, in plain clothes with a pinhole camera on his glasses, followed Mitch through the streets of Aden. Willa sighed and rubbed her hand against her forehead. To say that this was stressful would be an understatement. Coleman could feel the anxiety radiating off of her from behind him. 

"So, what is he, your boyfriend? Fiancé? Unrequited crush?" He glanced up at her, his voice a little lower than before. 

Willa scowled, shooting Coleman a look like he was crazy. "He's just my partner."

"I don't care about Sean as much as you care about Kruse." 

"Hey!" Green Two yelled from his relaxed position across the room.

Coleman simply flipped his number two soldier off, and turned his attention back to Willa, now sitting quietly next to him, staring at Mitch buying some produce from a cart. "We've just... been through a lot together, okay?" She shook her hand at him, trying to get him to drop the subject. 

Coleman was one to bust balls, but not one to pry. He dropped it and moved on. "Fair enough, but if you've been through so much together, can you tell me why he's talking to that gondola operator? Is he about to try to shake Green Eight?"

Willa leaned in. "I have no fucking clue. God damnit, Mitch."

Coleman leaned in too, watching the boat owner laugh at Mitch's joke, and pat him on his shoulder. "Why do I feel like he's about to do something stupid?" Coleman asked, as Mitch climbed into the boat and appeared to be inspecting it with the owner. 

Willa slowly wrapped her hand around her mouth and mumbled. "Probably because is." She answered, grimacing at the possibilities. 

"Green One, I swear to fucking god, I think he's buying this guys' boat. He's gonna get us both killed before any of this plan even works." Green Eight whispered into his mouthpiece. 

"Pull out if you need to, Green Eight." Coleman gave his instruction, before turning to Willa. "Your partner is an idiot."

She shook her head, rubbing her fingers into the corner of her left eye and wincing. "I'm aware." 

* * *

Mitch stopped to get lunch at a small eatery near the waterfront, sitting alone and scanning the passing locals who all gawked back at him. He was dressed in khaki cargo pants, a tan t-shirt, and a cream colored button up, hanging loosely over his torso with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His brown boots matched his brown backpack, and he topped the ensemble off with a special pair of black wayfarer sunglasses. He checked the time on his watch and sighed, before bringing the front collar of his t-shirt up to wipe the sweat away from his forehead. It didn't matter how lightly colored his clothing was, he was baking in the sun. His beard, long hair, and fair skin didn't help matters in the least. 

"You okay, babe?" Mitch heard in his ear piece. "I'm alone, no one else can hear you."

He leaned his hand against his chin, so that his mouth was closer to the hidden microphone embedded in his watch, and he hummed in agreement for Willa. 

"You're being quiet, M. What's going on?" Willa tried to hide the concern in her voice. 

Mitch brought his hand up to cover his mouth, pretending to stroke his thick mustache and beard. "I'm being watched."

Willa sighed, trying ignore the way that her jaw clenched shut in worry over those words. It was a hard task reminding herself that this is what they wanted. "Alright. You need to ditch the earpiece then."

Mitch pulled his teacup up to his lips to cover his mouth once more with a sip. "Yep." He whispered into the  band of his watch, before pulling his hand up to run his fingers through his hair and subtly take the earpiece out. He looked down at his half full teacup and covertly dropped the small electronic audio device into the liquid. He waved down his waiter and requested his check.

The young man's hand shook as he handed Mitch his bill. He couldn't even lift his eyes enough to meet Mitch's grateful glance, and Mitch knew that someone had probably said something to him. The waiter's sudden fear completely confirmed Mitch's suspicions that he was finally being watched; that he had finally dropped enough cash to get on the Bahji's radar. He felt badly for him, so he settled his bill and left an overwhelmingly generous tip for the young man's troubles. 

Mitch pulled his sunglasses off, squinting at the harsh sunlight, suddenly pouring into his retinas without any barrier. He brought them down to the bottom of his button down and began to clean the lenses. With his fingers somewhat tangled in and blocked by the fabric of his shirt, Mitch pulled the small, but long razor that he had fashioned to the inside of the wayfarers in between his fingers. He winced slightly, as he poked through the webbed skin in between his third and fourth fingers on his left hand, sticking the pointed end of the metal in like a splinter to make sure that it didn't slip out of his hand until he wanted it to. He brought his sunglasses back over his eyes, before grabbing his backpack off the ground next to his feet and pulling his map out. 

He made a big, over the top deal of unfolding the map of Aden out completely in front of him. He wanted to make himself look like a real target; someone hopelessly lost and clearly out of place. He examined it for a few moments, pretending to look up to get his bearings. He folded his obnoxiously large wad of money back into his money clip, threw it into the bottom of his bag, zipped it up and threw it over his left shoulder, as he rose to his feet and began walking. He folded the map in half twice and began walking in the direction of the compound. He figured that he would meander down some random blocks nearby, making sure that he was definitely being tailed, before walking straight into their territory. 

He held the map over his eyes, shielding his face from the harsh glare of the sun, pretending to look for street signs, regardless of the fact that he knew exactly where he was. Having to pretend like he was more helpless than he never was, was somewhat exhausting to Mitch, but it was what he had to do to get the job done. He heard the footfalls landing on the cobblestone streets behind him, as he kept his face buried in his map and continued walking. He listened and guessed that, in that moment, it was only two men following him. He had to actively fight his baser instincts and training, which both told him to turn around and eliminate the threats immediately. This was the plan that he had set up, and he was going to see it through to Mansur. 

He took a left down a busier street and recognized a few of the merchants, as he had blown some of his cash at their stands and carts the day before. Mitch nodded and politely smiled at one that he had had a long conversation with the morning before, but the man quickly averted his gaze and pretended to busy himself with something on his cart of spices. This fear was the second blatant hint that the Bahji had spread the word about the American man roaming around Aden, and Mitch's brain was firing on all cylinders. Every logical and sound thought in his mind was telling him to flee or fight; simply get himself out of the situation he had put himself in. Mitch ignored it. 

He made his next right, heading away from the water and towards the compound finally. He knew he was about five minutes, in his casual gait, away from the courtyard. The street he was on was more deserted, except for one larger man, picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick. Mitch pretended not to see him, by pausing and staring at his map. When he stopped walking, the footsteps ceased, as well, and Mitch was grateful that they weren't willing to try to take him so far away from the compound. His heart was racing more than he was expecting it to, and he felt the damp front collar of his t-shirt clinging to his sweaty chest. His adrenaline had kicked in when the merchant refused to make eye contact with Mitch because that was when he knew he had sealed his fate. He was on a collision course with Mansur, again, and he was ready, but he was more nervous than he thought he'd be. 

Mitch began walking again, taking his next left and seeing the ramp that wrapped around an old, abandoned building. At the bottom of that ramp would be the courtyard in the middle of the Bahji compound, where he hoped that they would take him, since Willa would be set up in a sniper's nest on an adjacent rooftop just in case anything went wrong. The idea of Willa slowed the rate of Mitch's heart. The image of her sleepy face that morning in bed with him calmed him. He wished that she was still talking in his earpiece. Instead of her whispers, Mitch heard the footsteps of three men now following behind him. 

Mitch saw the ramp finally. Suddenly, any fear or nervousness or doubt, that had been plaguing him in the past twenty minutes, was gone. Mitch couldn't help but crack a smile when he ceased to hear any footsteps behind him. He knew that likely meant someone would be waiting for him down in the courtyard, and that the Bahji had fallen right into his trap. He paused at the top of the steep and narrow gradient, and stuffed his map into his backpack. He lackadaisically threw it back over his right shoulder and continued his casual walk down to the courtyard. He made sure that his razor, still tucked between his fingers, was concealed and secure, as he made a left and walked to the left of the ramp. 

The dusty courtyard was deserted, but Mitch knew he wasn't alone. He saw a man step out of an old tannish-white and black Jeep about fifty yards away and he continued his stroll through the square. Mitch stopped, and let the stranger close the last ten feet himself; Mitch's first fuck you to the group that he was about to annihilate. He sized the man up: a few inches shorter than Mitch, dark beard and eyes, mostly black clothing, with the exception of a gray shirt and taqiyah. Mitch recognized him from the beach, and his jaw clenched. 

Before the man had fully landed at Mitch's feet, he spoke. "As-Salaam-Alaikum." 

Mitch couldn't pretend to be chummy or blissfully unaware of his circumstances. He was filled with hatred for this man who he knew participated in the death of his fianceé. Mitch managed to steel his face and settled on a neutral, apathetic and calm expression. "Wa-Alaikum-Salaam." Mitch returned the greeting as nonchalantly as he could, his voice a little huskier than he would have hoped. 

"I think you might be lost, friend." The man switched to English, as there was no mistaking where Mitch was from. 

Mitch heard the footsteps again, and he knew what was about to happen. "I think maybe I am." Mitch replied, as he took his sunglasses off, trying to see if the man recognized him. There was no reaction, but Mitch did clock about four men with semi-automatic rifles step out from under the shadows under the scaffolding on the first floor of the building to his immediate right. 

"Don't worry, I think we may be able to help." The man said, making no attempts to hide the sinister undertone in his voice. 

Mitch raised his eyebrows in fake curiosity, but he heard the footsteps getting closer and closer. They were right behind him. "We?" He turned, and saw an AK-47 aimed at his back. Then he saw nothing at all, as a black hood got placed over his head.


	42. Day 209 (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch and Mansur come face to face once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Extreme violence and lots and lots of blood.

" _Should we step in before they kill him_?" Green Three asked, listening to the sounds coming through the speakers of Coleman's laptop.

Coleman waited to hear from Willa. She was the one running the operation, and if she wanted to change the timeline, she could. Willa remained silent; she could hear it happening through her earpiece, as well. She scratched at her nose, and sniffled, trying to remain nonchalant, regardless of the fact that they couldn’t see her. 

"He can take a beating. He'll be fine." Willa glanced down at her watch. "You should all be ready though. You breach in about an hour." 

The other men dispersed and went back to cleaning their weapons or checking their tactical gear. Coleman spoke softer into his mouthpiece; he was pretty sure none of the other SEAL’s had their earpieces in yet, except for Green Seven, who was on the rooftop with her already. " _We can be ready in a moments notice if you want to breach now._ " 

She narrowed her eyes into the scope of her gun, training her focus back onto the scene in the next building. Willa considered not even answering, assuming that that would be answer enough. She sighed at what she saw, and cracked her neck before replying, quietly. 

"You were trained for certain things.  _We were too_. Agent Kruse can handle a little waterboarding."

 _She hoped_.

* * *

" **PLEASE STOP.** " Mitch coughed and choked, trying to get the water out of his lungs. 

It burned his insides and his skin tingled uncomfortably, but it was nothing he hadn't been subjected to in his first month at The Barn. He even passed out several times when Stan was the one doing to torturing. The men pouring the water against the hood this time were almost going a little easy on him, in comparison. 

But he had to sell it. 

"Please stop!  _Please_. My fianceé, my parents, my company, they'll all pay whatever ransom you set, just please stop." He cried and panted, his head slumped forward, trying to get the fabric away from his nose so he could breath better. 

He felt the hair on the back of his head be harshly tugged at once again, and his head jerked back. He breathed deeply when he felt the sopping wet black hood be draped against his face once more. " _What are you doing here_?" One of the men asked in Arabic, again. 

Mitch pulled every ounce of fake desperation out of his body, and allowed it to shine through in his voice. "I was just here on business. I am  _just_  a businessman, I swear."

" _Do you do business here often?_ "

"Yes, yes, I am my firm's best salesman in the Middle East." Mitch cried. "Please just call them and ask, they'll verify."

* * *

"How's your boy holding up?" Green Seven asked. 

Willa adjusted the butt of her sniper rifle against her shoulder and wiped a bead of sweat off of her forehead, that was headed towards her eye. The sun beat down on her, and the heat from the sun-baked rooftop burned her stomach and thighs, but she pulled at the burqa to make sure that she was covered, regardless of how hot the black fabric was on top of her back and head.

She adjusted her scope and listened to the continuing torture through her earpiece. "Agent Kruse is fine.” She quickly moved to change the topic at hand. “You finally got that AR assembled? A little  _slow_  for a SEAL." Willa and Green Seven had been there for four hours already, and she still wasn’t in the mood for small talk or pleasantries. 

Mitch's pain put her in pain. 

"I like to be thorough, Agent Hurley." Green Seven countered. "Have you got eyes on Mansur yet?" 

She readjusted the focus on her scope and examined the bodies in the room with Mitch. "Someone entered a few minutes ago, but I can't tell. He hasn't approached Kruse yet, and he hasn't stepped into the light enough for me to make out features. He could just be another lackey."  

* * *

" _Maratan 'ukhraa_." One of the men directed the other.

"No, no, no,  _plea_ -" Mitch was drowned out by the sounds of his own gurgling. 

This had been going on for hours. He thought of Willa and how, in order to get home to her, he had to keep fighting against his body's exhaustion and desire to shut down and just drown already. Her face in his mind was what kept him thrashing, kept him holding on, even after his muscles grew fatigued and his lungs burned as if they had been set aflame. The water stopped and he heard the men shouting questions at him again. 

"Are you a spy?" One shouted next to his ear, in English, and he flinched. 

"No, no, no,  _la, la_! I am not a spy!"

" _Spy's don't wear watches this nice_." A smooth and calm voice spoke in English, from across the room. Mitch immediately recognized it, clenching his fists together behind his back, and ceasing the slow and subtle cutting of his taped wrists, with the small razor he had hidden between his fingers.  

* * *

" _Fuck me_..." Willa whispered, feeling like the air had been pulled from her lungs. "It's  _him_ , Green Leader. I have visual confirmation on Mansur. He's in the room with The Package." She spoke into the microphone clipped to her watch, and ceased blinking, unwilling to pull her focus off anything but Mitch and Mansur, in the building across the way. 

" _Do we have permission to begin clearing, Eagle Eye_?" Coleman asked through her earpiece. 

"Is the courtyard clear, Green Seven?" She asked, pulling back the burqa from over her head and rifle. 

"Yes, Ma'am." 

"You have the affirmative to take the courtyard and the first floor. Green Seven has you on thermal. Do  _not_  get fucking caught." She warned. 

" _We are go_." Coleman said, before growing quiet, and suddenly all you could hear were the hushed pants of six men moving quickly and precisely. 

"You gotta provide support, Hurley." Green Seven reminded her, and she genuinely thought about ignoring him. She listened as Green Seven crouched against the ledge of the roof the two of you were on and quietly called out instructions over his mouthpiece to his team leader below in the courtyard. " _Hurley_..." She listened to distant groans and soft pops echoing off of the buildings around her. She huffed angrily and turned her scope off of Mitch. 

"Call 'em out." Willa urged Green Seven, bitingly, adjusting her scope to focus on the distance of the courtyard. 

"Two under the scaffolding." Green Seven replied.

"Got 'em." Willa took a breath in, hovered her finger over the trigger, and simultaneously exhaled and squeezed. 

The first man's body hadn't even hit the ground before she adjusted slightly and aimed for the forehead of the second man. Both men dropped like flies, and she adjusted back to Mitch, finally focusing back on the conversation playing out, between her lover and the man he was destined to kill, in her left earpiece. The auditory overload was intense, as Mitch's words rung out against her left ear drum, and the hushed orders of Green Leader and his men whispered into her right earpiece. 

" _Eagle Eye, we're being pinned down on the southeast corner of the first floor. Do you have a better angle_?" Green Four mumbled into Willa's right ear. 

Two silent shots zipped through the screen covering the window on the first floor, and she returned to watching Mitch once again.

* * *

Mitch fell silent when he heard Mansur's voice. He struggled to stay in his frightened and submissive character. He clenched his fists together, digging his fingernails and the minuscule razor into his palms. He felt his hot and angry breath being absorbed by the dripping wet fabric covering his face. 

_Murderous rage, murderous rage, murderous rage_. 

It was all he could think about in that moment.

He heard the footsteps of two men softly approaching him, shuffling their way through the gravely debris that he felt under his own boots. Suddenly, his hood was ripped off of his head, tiny strands of his long, dark brown hair going with it. He jerked his head to the side, wanting to get away from the angle where the hood was pulled. 

Mitch squinted, adjusting to warm late-afternoon light that was streaming through the holes on the intricate patterned screens that covered the windows. He glanced at the two men standing in front of him, one he recognized as  _Khalid al-Hazmi_ , Mansur's right hand, and the other was, none other than,  _Adnan al-Mansur_ , in the flesh. 

Mitch was right.

 _He had recognized the voice_.

He stared forward, zero emotion reading on his face, quietly blinking and steadying his breath. He remained disturbingly still, not wanting anyone to hear the gentle sawing of his razor against his duct tape cuffs. Mansur sauntered, too casually, in front of Mitch's direct line of sight. He sat in the same kind of sturdy, metal chair that his men had Mitch strapped into. 

Mansur sighed, seemingly inconvenienced by this kidnapping that he most likely ordered, and caught Mitch's direct stare. " _Who are you?_ " He spoke in English and Mitch wondered if Mansur recognized him. The last time he had seen him, Mitch didn't have the beard, and his hair was much shorter, but he could remember him. 

Mitch certainly remembered Mansur. 

He tried to remember his cover and his plan. He tried to remember how to sound desperate and afraid. He tried to make his breath sound ragged and uneven, regardless of the steady inflation in his chest. 

"My-my name is Mitch Kruse. I already t-t-told them that. I'm a b-b-business man, not a sp-spy."

Mansur continued to turn Mitch's impeccable knockoff of a  _Rolex_  in his fingers, twisting the knob on the side. He spoke calmly and quietly, always making sure to look Mitch in the eye when he opened his mouth again. "Why are you in Aden?”

"I'm here on business. I am helping a shi-shipping company with their t-t-tech..." Mitch used his loud fake-stutter to mask the shredding noises of the tape, binding his wrists together.   

"How do you speak Arabic so well?" Mansur tilted his head curiously to the side, staring at Mitch's distraught expression. Mitch answered his question, explaining that he did business in the Middle East often, then begging for them to just call in the ransom for him once more. Mansur simply watched him, only asking questions when he felt it necessary. "Who are you?"

“I already told you!  _Please_!" 

Khalid yelled something in Arabic, that Mitch ignored, too fixated on the man sitting in front of him, until Mitch felt an open hand slap across his face. Mitch pushed down his primal urge to annihilate every living being in that room because of that slap. 

He wasn't ready. 

 _He hadn't asked his questions yet_. 

He faked his best whimper turned sob and pleaded with Khalid not to do it again. Khalid found a sick joy in Mitch's begging, and hit him harder the second time just to hear the man sob more. 

 _Murderous rage, murderous rage, murderous rage_. 

It always came easy, and it was here to stay.

* * *

Willa heard and saw the second smack come across Mitch's cheek, and her finger grazed the trigger. Just the smallest curl of her knuckle and the contents of Khalid's brain would be decorating the dusty ground by Mitch's feet. She let out a labored breath and finally moved her finger away. 

She had not been given the signal. 

Willa listened to, and took solace in, the soft pops and gasping breaths coming through her right earpiece. The SEAL Team was on the third floor, two levels away from Mitch's holding room, having swept the bottom half of the building in its entirety. 

" _How's The Package doing_?" She heard Coleman mutter in her ear. 

"They're waterboarding him again."She whispered through gritted teeth. "I think he's starting to lose it a little. He's getting a bit sarcastic with Mansur."

" _We're getting close, Eagle Eye_." Green One tried to comfort Willa. 

She watched through her scope as they pulled the sopping wet hood from over Mitch's face again, and he coughed and gasped, but he was no longer groveling for mercy. She knew it meant that he was getting close to breaking free of his restraints.

* * *

Mitch's lungs burned in his chest, and he panted, trying to catch his breath, but his gaze was dead set on the jugular vein in Mansur's neck. It was where he would slice with his razor, when he was finally free of his restraints. 

"Are you done begging?" Mansur asked, speaking in English again for Mitch. He rose from his chair, and circled the young hostage. Mitch could tell that he was growing suspicious because Mitch was becoming less willing to maintain the charade. 

Mitch tilted his head to the side and stared back at the monster in front of him, his gaze almost challenging and predatory. "Do you  _really_  not remember me?"

Mansur glanced up at Khalid and a few of the other men in the room, suddenly feeling like Mitch's prey. " _Give me that_." Mansur yelled quickly in Arabic, snatching the watch that he had just handed to Khalid, back from his hands, before throwing it against the cement floor, and stomping it with his foot. 

* * *

" ** _SHIT_**!" Willa yelled, banging her left hand against the pavement below her body. " **Fuck**. Fuck." She pulled the earpiece out of her left ear canal and tossed it aside, angrily. She focused her gaze back through the scope, then reported what had just caused her outburst. "Mansur just destroyed the watch. I think he knows. I've lost audio."

" _Affirmative, Eagle Eye. We have lost audio, as well._ " Coleman spoke into Willa's remaining earpiece. " _We’ve swept the last level and are outside the door, waiting to pick up The Package. Do we have the go ahead_?" 

She watched, as Mansur and Khalid threw a few hard punches against Mitch's face, and she weighed the pros and cons of just ending them for Mitch, right then and there. Willa held off because she was certain that he would be shot dead before the SEAL’s breached the room, to protect him, if she took down Mansur, at that point in time. 

"Negative,  _negative_. I haven’t been given the signal yet. Wait, just wait. He isn't free yet, I don't think." 

" _Affirmative, Eagle Eye. We are ready to go when you are_." Green One whispered. 

Her left eye started to dry out and itch. Willa needed to blink but she didn't want to miss the signal. She fidgeted in place against the searingly hot concrete that she was laying on top of, and continued watching Mitch speaking to Mansur. She sighed softly, growing more antsy as the seconds ticked away. 

"No one touches Mansur but Mitch." Willa spoke into the microphone clipped to the band of her watch, which was linked in to the ear pieces on all of the Navy SEAL’s. 

" _We understand, Eagle Eye_." Coleman whispered back into her earpiece. 

"He will lose his shit if he's not the one  _to_ -" She paused, and blinked quickly, giving some much needed moisture to her eyeball, to make sure she wasn't seeing anything incorrectly. 

Mitch  _was_ , in fact, rubbing his right ear against his shoulder, pretending to have an itch. Willa knew better. She knew what it meant. 

"He gave the signal. Breach on my command in six, five, four, three, two, one......  **breach, breach, breach!** " 

She heard the deafening sound of several flashbang grenades, followed by a barrage of gun shots in her earpiece. Willa adjusted the butt of the gun against her shoulder again, and focused the scope to a barely wider angle of the room. She watched as Mitch stood, his ankles still taped together, grabbed the heavy metal chair he was sitting in, off of the dusty floor, and slammed it against Mansur's body.

Willa saw a man about to shoot Mitch, and she pulled her trigger. She watched as the man instantly hit the floor. Mansur scrambled on the ground, trying to grab at any weapon to defend himself against Mitch, and she readied herrself to take the shot. She wouldn't  _not_  protect him, just to protect his pride and his plot for revenge, or retribution, or  _whatever_  he was referring to it as that day. Mitch drove the edge of the metal seat across the back of Mansur's head, and Willa decided to scan the room. 

"I got the guy on your left, Green One." She muttered, as the man who she was aiming at was already on the floor dead from her shot.

Willa picked off four more men, three of which looked like they were about to hurt the man she loved. She was there to provide support for the whole team, but her eye was mostly trained on Mitch and those surrounding him. She picked off one more terrorist with a bullet through his throat, then she adjusted her scope slightly again, watching as Mitch had fallen to his knees in front of Mansur's body, the metal chair still in his deadly hands. 

She caught the reflection of the barrel of a gun in her scope, adjusted and took her shot, cracking the man in the back and watching his skull release the contents of his brain because of her bullet, but not before the terrorist shot a round off in Mitch's direction. Mitch got grazed against the place where his shoulder and neck met, but his body only reacted for a moment, being pushed back by the momentum of the ammunition. Her breath hitched until she saw him lift the seat again, in order to continue repeatedly driving the leg of the chair into Mansur's now concaved face. 

Willa couldn't completely tell from the scope, but she was quite certain that Mansur's chest was no longer rising and falling. Mitch was drenched in the man's blood, and she just knew he was dead. The commotion in the room began to die down, as the SEAL’s began clearing the other rooms on the level. 

"Update, Green One?" She requested from Coleman. 

" _Main targets neutralized, Eagle Eye. Package ready to be retrieved_." Coleman reported back, standing over Mitch.

Willa heard Coleman tell the other SEAL’s to begin collecting hard drives and documents and anything that might be useful, but she wasn't paying nearly as much attention to what was being babbled about in her ear, as much as she was focused on what Mitch was doing in her scope. She watched as Mitch crawled towards a dead terrorist, who's body had dropped near by, and grabbed the dagger from his slowly rigor mortising hand. 

She was one-hundred percent certain that Mansur was now dead, but Willa watched as as red faced, feral Mitch began driving the blade into the man's chest and stomach over and over and over and over and over again. 

" _Shit, shit, shit_." Willa mumbled, as she began rising quickly to her feet. She fastened the strap to the sniper rifle over her shoulder, grabbed her backpack, and took off running, leaving her disguise behind. 

She took three steps at a time, bounding down the stairs, trying to get from the roof of the adjacent building, to the room where Mitch was unraveling as quickly as possible. She ran out into the courtyard, her lungs beginning to burn from the sudden exercise, and saw two stragglers walking out of the building. Willa lifted her handgun and clocked the two of them before they could even focus their guns in her direction. 

" _Eagle Eye, The Package has fucking lost it_." Coleman mumbled into his mouthpiece. " _Come on, man, stop. He's dead_." She heard him tell Mitch.

" **Don't touch him!**   _Don't fucking touch him_ , I'm-" One more with her Glock in the stairwell. The shot rang out through the building, as she did not have a silencer on her handgun. "almost there. Just don't touch him."

" _Affirmative, Ma'am_." Coleman whispered, taking a step back from the deranged young man before him. 

Willa entered the room no more than thirty seconds later, and stopped. Some of the other SEAL’s had come back in to gawk at Mitch's unhinged behavior when they heard Coleman's update over the earpieces. She looked around at the pure carnage that hung over the dusty and semi-dark room, and then looked at Mitch. He was kneeling in a pool of blood, and his cream colored shirt was now dyed burgundy with pulpy blood and brain matter. Willa pulled her backpack and rifle off of her back and leaned them against the wall by the door, then holstered her Glock in the back of her jeans. 

"Get out." She spoke softly the first time. No one budged, so Willa lifted her head and glanced at the few men in the room that didn't belong, and screamed, " ** _GET THE FUCK OUT!"_**  Coleman jerked his head back, and his men quickly left the room. "You fucking too." She stared at him, listening to Mitch panting in the background, as he continued driving the blade into Mansur's mangled body. 

"Negative, Ma'am. I am not leaving you in here alone with  _him_." Coleman grimaced at Mitch, and she shook her head, not having the time to argue anymore. 

Willa walked over to the other side of Mansur's pulpy body, listening to the squishing noises of Mitch repeatedly slicing through the same macerated organs and flesh. She knelt in the other side of the pool of blood, the warm liquid quickly soaking her pants. She looked at Mitch, his face was covered in blood and sweat and pure malice. 

" _Mitch_...." Willa spoke softly, keeping her hands resting on the tops of her thighs where he could see them. He continued his brutal overkill. " _Mitch_...... it's done." She repeated herrself, a little more firm this time. "He's dead." She honestly wasn’t sure if he even realized that yet. 

Willa watched as his hands slowed; the blade still piercing the  _mush_  that was Mansur now, just at a lessened pace. He looked physically spent, and she began to hear how labored his breathing was. His plunges began to slow to every thirty seconds or so, just letting the blade pierce wherever it landed; his hand occasionally disappearing into the wrecked innards of Mansur's stomach cavity, and coming out covered in blood and debris.

She wasn’t sure what to say. Willa had never seen him like this before. The night in the bathroom, in The Barn, that he went after Collins and Clemens, while Willa beat into Brunski, Mitch was clear and precise. She had never seen him so unhinged. It didn’t necessarily frighten her, she just didn’t know how to bring him back from wherever he had gone. She thought back on why he was doing this, and spit out the first thing that came to mind. 

" _Katrina is proud of you_. You can stop. It's over." She lifted her hands up in surrender, not catching Mitch's direct attention, but she knew he saw her sitting in a defensive position. " _We have to go_." Willa whispered.

Eventually, he slowed to a stopped. Willa and Mitch simply knelt in silence, in a pool of blood and guts, a small crowd gathering once again. His chest heaved over and over, as he attempted to catch his breath. His lungs were on fire. 

"The exfil is here. We have to go  _now_  before any sort of backup comes." Coleman spoke up, interrupting the quiet that fell upon the room. 

Willa looked up at the veteran Navy SEAL team leader and nodded, before looking at her lover. She reached out slowly, finally touching Mitch's arm. His eyes fluttered up from the unidentifiable body on the floor to her eyes, blood dripping off of his long eye lashes. 

"It's over." He nodded slowly and quietly. "It's time to go home, M."

"Okay." He finally whispered, standing when she did. She pulled the knife from his hand and felt the handle squish against her skin. 

Willa cut the tape from around Mitch's ankles, glanced around the room, looking for Mitch's backpack, and stuffed the knife inside of the satchel when she finally spotted it thrown behind a stack of chairs. She pulled at the strap of Mitch's backpack, extending it as long as it would go, before placing it over her front. She pulled her backpack over her back, and picked up her sniper rifle. Willa grabbed Mitch's hand, helping him down the stairs, never having seen him so dead behind his eyes or unengaged before. She glanced back at Coleman, who was doing his best to make sure that no one was following them out of the Bahji's compound. 

A tinted windowed van was to take the group from the compound, out to an airfield where they would be evacuated back into Saudi Arabia, as soon as night fell in a couple of hours. 

"Set the match, Green Three. We got forty-five before there is an explosion.  _Haul ass_." Coleman shouted both into his mouthpiece and out loud to those around him, as they all rushed out of the compound and into the bus waiting in the courtyard. She glanced at the dozens of gas cans haphazardly strewn about the last room on the ground floor, and she spotted Green Three waiting with a zippo in his hand, smoking a cigarette nonchalantly, as he waited for his headcount to be complete. 

The rest of the operation didn't matter to Willa though, not once she got Mitch in the back of the van and borrowed a rag from one of the SEAL’s. She felt the vehicle begin to drive away through the gravel below, as she began wiping Mitch's face clean of his past.


	43. Day 220

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch faces old demons of the night, and Willa grapples with letting him bring someone new into his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: role playing, dom/sub dynamics, LOTS of spanking, aftercare, gratuitous smut. I got so carried away.

Mitch thought he heard his name, but he wasn’t sure. He left his eyes closed and turned onto his right side more, pulling the sheet up towards his chin.

He  _definitely_  heard his name this time. 

It came from Willa's mouth, and it sounded strained.

A million thoughts flooded through Mitch’s mind in a matter of seconds. 

_What if someone came to hurt Willa? What if someone managed to get into the apartment? What if he hadn’t wiped out most of the Bahji and someone found out where the two of them lived?_

_What if he couldn’t protect her?_

_What if he couldn’t protect **another**  woman he loved? _

_What if he lost Willa?_

Mitch would burn down entire cities to keep Willa safe.

He reached under his pillow, quickly peeling the Beretta he had taped to the wooden steps that made up the headboard of their bed, and he jolted up, eyes snapping open and trying to adjust to the lack of light in the room. He had one arm wrapped around Willa's body, accidentally jostling her awake, while the other trained the gun around the room, looking for the intruder.

“ _Wh-what’s going on_?” She mumbled, not having opened her eyes yet, instead opting to curl her legs under his bents ones, while bending her body so that Willa's head was behind Mitch’s back; her nose and mouth leaving soft kisses on his tensely flexed ass cheek, over his boxer briefs. “ _Baby_?” She whispered when he remained silent. Willa realized in that moment that Mitch’s skin was hot and that he was panting. He had gotten his adrenaline pumping and his heart rate up. She popped her head up slowly, and finally saw the firearm being lowered onto the mattress in front of Mitch. “Is someone here? Did you hear something?”

“Yea,  _you_.” Mitch muttered, releasing his vice grip on her side.

She rubbed her fingers up and down Mitch’s back, gently working into his tense muscles. “ _Me_? I was probably just talking in my sleep.” Willa surmised, knowing that she had only just woken up.

“I was asleep and I heard my name, and you sounded in pain, and then you said it again, and my brain  _just_ -” He rubbed his sinewy hands against his eyes and forehead, then ran them up into his hair.

“I was dreaming about  _you_ , clearly.” She whispered, with a smile, before leaning in to leave slow, velvety kisses on his neck. Mitch felt just a little bit calmer because of Willa's penchant for rationality. He wrapped his hand a little tighter against her body once more and pulled her that much closer. “Would it make you feel better if we ran the security feeds through?”

“Yea, maybe.. I’m just gonna check the closet and bathroom and stuff first though.” Mitch couldn’t shake it completely.

He got out of bed, his overheated presence quickly turning cold in the sheets, as he walked through the bedroom, his gun trained at the ground by his side. She turned the television in front of her bed on and flipped on the security feed. Mitch cleared the adjoining rooms, and checked that her bedroom door was still locked. 

He’d definitely just imagined it all. 

He watched from behind the bed, as Willa rewound the footage to each camera for the entire day. The only people that came in and out of the apartment were the two of them.

She heard Mitch sigh loudly behind her, and she turned. “Babe, I think you just heard me having a dream. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Mitch came back down to the bed, leaving the gun on the nightstand next to her and pulling the remote out of her hand to shut the television off again. He climbed over Willa and got back under the covers. “I feel like an idiot.” He huffed, as she snuggled against his chest.

Willa furrowed her brow. “Why?”

Mitch sighed. “You woke up to me scanning the room for intruders, with a gun drawn, because you mumbled my name in your sleep. I need to get a fucking grip.” He rubbed his hand against his forehead again.

She furrowed her brow, concerned by what Mitch had just said, so Willa approached the next topic cautiously. “Baby, how’ve you been since Aden?”

Mitch turned to look at his sleepy-eyed girlfriend, and shrugged, an air of underlying annoyance simmering in the space between the two of them. “I’m fine, why?”

She shook her head, and dropped it. “ _Nothing_. Nevermind.”

“No,  _what_? Why? Are  _you_  having nightmares about Aden? Do  _you_ feel unsafe?” He grew slightly agitated again.

Willa wiggled her way completely on top of Mitch’s body, laying flat against him. He pulled the covers up over her back and wrapped his arms around her, a crack in his annoyed expression showing, as he knew she was about to say something to make him feel better.

“Do you know how  _safe_  and  _loved_  I  _constantly_  feel with you next to me, when I go to sleep?” Mitch didn’t answer, he just rubbed against the sheet on her back, instantly feeling a bit more warm at her question. “You heard me probably,  _barely_  say your name, you woke up,  _shielded_   _me_ , and drew a gun. If someone had been here, I know we would’ve been fine.”

Mitch snickered for a moment; letting out a laughing breath. “ _I don’t know_.”

“ _I do._  You are the  _epitome_  of selfless love, Mitch Rapp.  _Literally_ throwing your body over mine to protect me.”

“From nothing.” Mitch interjected.

“You didn’t know that at the time.”

Mitch shrugged lightly and shook his head, pushing back the hairs falling in her face. “My first instinct will always be to protect you.”

“I know, and I love you for it.” She mumbled, clearly drifting back to sleep against his warm presence. “If I fall asleep right now, are you going to stare up at the ceiling for the rest of the night, quietly internalizing what just happened, or are you actually going to try to sleep?” Her yawning dug her chin into his chest and it made him yawn.

“I’ll sleep, I promise. You know I like it when you sleep on top of me.” He brought his arms under the blankets, propping them up over Willa's shoulders, and tucking the both of them back in for her remaining hours, before it was truly time to get up. He left a soft kiss on the top of her head. “Was it a dirty dream?” Mitch mumbled, with a sly smirk.

Willa chuckled quietly. “It might be, if you let me go back to sleep.”

“ _I love you_.”

“I love you most.” She replied.

Mitch shook his head, a small smile resting on his lips, and he finally shut his eyes again.

* * *

Willa walked downstairs to find Mitch, some time around two in the afternoon. She glanced up from her Spanish-English dictionary when she heard his voice coming from one of the couches in the living room. She smiled at him rubbing the back of his neck, and using his stern business voice on the phone.

“No,  _no_ , I don’t have a space yet, but I’m looking again today at five.” Mitch sighed.

She knew he was stressed, and after the interruption in their sleep that morning, he was tired too. You decided not to bother him for more than a kiss. Willa walked around the back of the couch, listening to his conversation with what she assumed was the hiring agency. 

“I just want to go through some of the candidates with you to get your opinion on who deserves an interview. You know them, Chuck, I don’t." 

She snaked her hand down the front of his chest, placing a soft kiss on his temple from behind, and smiled when she felt Mitch’s hand reach back to hold her in place. He leaned his head back on the couch cushions and faced her, upside down. Willa smirked and left a kiss on his perfect pink lips and then went to walk away. 

"Hold on, Chuck..  _Hold on_.. Yea, just a second.” He turned to her, catching her arm before she got completely out of his reach, his other hand holding the speaker to the phone against his chest. “ _Don’t go_. Come translate the worst conversation ever had, into Spanish. It’ll be good practice.”

Willa laughed. “I don’t want to distract you.”

“You won’t.  _Stay_. Please.” She smiled, nodded, and came around to the front of the couch. Mitch moved piles of papers onto the coffee table, where his feet were propped up, and picked his phone back up. “ _Chuck_? Yea, I’m back.”

She half listened to him, disgruntled and annoyed with the hiring agency for making him go through the tedious process of actually hiring people for his company. He knew it had to be a legitimate and profitable business, but Mitch was Orion at heart, and business just didn’t do it for him anymore. He sucked it up regardless. 

Mitch found so much peace simply being in Willa's presence. He grabbed the foot not tucked under her leg, and pulled it into his lap. He began kneading his thumb and long fingers into her bony flesh, and she grinned. 

 _God, she loved this man_.

“ _Shiiit_. I didn’t even think of a secretary…” Mitch muttered, and her eyes snapped up from her book. 

 _This_  cliche Willa could live without. 

“ _Umm_ … yea, I don’t know, I don’t really care who you get me, just someone that is discreet and experienced or something. Someone that won’t listen in on my calls…  _ever_.” Mitch ceased rubbing Willa's feet, and threw his head against the back of the couch in exasperation, letting out a very loud sigh to let the man on the other end of the phone know just how frustrated he was. “ _Yea_ , that’s a good idea. Send me the resumes and video introductions and I’ll look them over tonight and give you a call back tomorrow…..  _Yep_. Thanks a lot, Chuck…. You too.” Mitch ended the call and threw his phone on the coffee table. “ _Ugh_.” He groaned. “I hate this ‘running a business’ shit. I am  _this_  close to just telling people I’m a government employed hitman and just letting the chips fall where they may.”

Willa ignored his absurd threat, tossed her book on the coffee table, and climbed over to straddle Mitch’s lap. He smirked, wrapped his hands around her ass, and sighed softly at the feeling of her hands pawing at his chest and shoulders. 

“What was Chuck saying about a secretary?”

“ _Hmm_?” Mitch quirked an eyebrow up, not seeing that coming as what she would say first while sitting in his lap.

“What was Chuck saying about a secretary?” Willa repeated. 

Mitch cocked his head to the side. “Just that I need one.”

She narrowed her eyes at his caramel brown ones. “I don’t want you to have a young female secretary; that is like a bad stalker movie starring Beyoncé just waiting to happen.”

Mitch snickered and licked his lips, grabbing her ass a little firmer. “You jealous?”

“No.  _Not yet,_ andI don’t think you’ll want me to be, for her sake.” She grinned, finally leaning forward to bite at Mitch’s lower lip.

“I need a secretary though, Will. I’m running a business. I can’t answer  _all_  of my own calls.”

She continued grinning, leaning back down to kiss his neck and below his ears. Mitch sighed and gently rotated his hips below Willa, looking for some friction. “ _I_  can be your secretary.”

Mitch chuckled, and pulled her off of him, holding Willa in front of him and seeing the pure lust behind her evergreen eyes. “Not dressed like  _that_  you can’t. My office will have a dress code.”

“I’ll take care of it. Just one more chance.  _Please don’t fire me, Mr. Rapp_. I’ll do  _anything_  to keep the job. I have to pay for school.” Willa teased, biting her lip and fluttering her eyelashes.

Mitch snickered. “Better hurry up. I’ll be waiting here,  _but not for long._ ”

* * *

Mitch was putting his paperwork in order, after having it haphazardly strewn about the living room and kitchen, when he heard the loud clunking of Willa's heels against the metal staircase. He glanced up and an instant smirk spread across his face. This was his  _soulmate_ dressed in a white button down, a tight black pencil skirt, what he was pretty certain was his favorite pair of black thigh highs with the seam up the back, and a pair of black pumps. Mitch licked his lips and felt his cock twitch in his pants.

“Is this better,  _boss_?” Willa asked, slowly approaching, watching him like prey.

Mitch returned her stare, unsure if she understood just how much she was the prey in this scenario. “ _Much_ , but you took too long, and we’ve been over this, Miss Hurley, it’s  _Mr. Rapp_.”

Willa grinned, watching Mitch sit back on the couch, his legs spread and his arms resting on the cushions behind him. A sign of relaxed power that she enjoyed greatly. “I’m  _so_  sorry, Mr. Rapp. What can I do to make it up to you?”

Mitch clicked his tongue against his teeth and tilted his head to the side. “I’m not sure you can. I may have to  _let you go_.”

She dropped to her knees in front of him, gripping his thighs and running her hands up his legs, as she pretended to beg. “No,  _no_ , please, Mr. Rapp. I need this job….  _I’ll do anything_.”

“ _Anything_?” Mitch echoed smugly.

“Anything. I’ll do  _whatever_  you tell me.”

Mitch felt a surge of energy rush through his body. He wouldn’t lie and say that he didn’t love the idea of Willa submitting to him. She was an incredibly strong and independent woman, and he fell in love with that aspect of her, but it was nice being the totally dominant one every once in a while in a relationship full of two dominant personalities. Willa hadn’t even touched him and his cock was already hard and aching for release. 

He was so wrapped around her finger, it was borderline hilarious. 

 _He loved it though_.

“Unbutton the top two buttons.” Mitch nodded at her chest.

She kept an intense gaze on him, as Willa's fingers made quick work of her shirt. He found her stare to be much more seductive than her undressing. Willa finally broke it to ruffle her shirt open, making certain that he could see the skimpy black bra underneath. “I’ll do whatever you want me to. You’re such a good boss.”

“I didn’t ask you to speak, Miss Hurley.” Mitch chided her, as she tried to suppress a snicker, and tried to keep still, refraining from rubbing her thighs together to get the throbbing in her pussy to stop.

“I’m so sorry.” Willa batted her eyelashes, a fake look of concern spread across her features.

“You aren’t yet,  _but you will be_.” Mitch warned. “Come here.” Mitch scooted to the edge of the couch, pushing the coffee table back with the bottom of his foot. “Lay across my knee.” Willa let out an excited huff and did as she was told. She shut her eyes and let her head drop down next to his thigh when she felt his large hands running up the backs of her thighs. “ _Are you fucking kidding me?_ ” Mitch mumbled. “Stand up.  **Stand back up**.” He told Willa in a firmer tone.

She complied, breathing heavily, like an animal in heat. He was torturing her with anticipation. “Did I do something?” Willa asked innocently.

“Take off your shirt.” She watched him as she did. “And your skirt.” Willa unzipped the skirt at the side and shimmied slowly out of the figure hugging fabric. Mitch huffed, annoyedly. “Take off the bra.” He enjoyed the sound of metal hooks hitting the hardwood floor, as her bra dropped to the ground. “ _Bend back over my knee._ ” Willa did as she was told.

“ _Ah_.” A punched moan escaped from Willa's mouth as she felt Mitch quickly slip a finger inside of her dripping, sensitive pussy. 

She glanced up behind her and watched him then slip that finger into his mouth, sucking her juices off and smirking. A tremor shook her body; she honestly could’ve come right then. He was the epitome of pure fucking sex appeal. He looked down and wrapped his hand around Willa's jaw, ensuring she was looking straight at him, as he spoke with authority. 

“I thought I told you last time,  _you_   _fucking_   _tell_   _me_  when you aren’t wearing panties.”

“I’m so sorry.  _I forgot_.” Willa muttered, waiting for what she hoped came next.

“And you know what these tights do to me.” She pretended to pout and nod. “I’m going to have to punish you, you know that,  _right_?”

“I deserve it. I’ve been bad.” Willa tried to keep a repentant tone in her voice, but she was struggling. 

 _She wanted it_.

“I need one thing from you first, Willa.” She hummed and closed her eyes, her whole body vibrating with yearning. “Baby, _look at me_.” Willa did as she was told. “’ _Green_ ’ means?” She groaned and rolled her head to the side. She didn’t need the safe words, Mitch would never hurt her; she _knew this._  “ _Hey_ , I won’t do anything until you tell me what ‘ _Green_ ’ means.”

Willa sighed, frustration and slight annoyance flooding her body suddenly, but she relented. “’ _Green_ ’ means go, ‘ _yellow_ ’ means slow down and ‘ _red_ ’ means stop.”

Mitch’s smile grew impish again. “ _Good girl_. Now, you can scream. Everyone has gone home for the day.  _No one is going to hear you_.” Mitch told her, still holding her by the jaw, as his left hand rubbed large, soft circles across her bare ass.

“Do you want me to scream?” She bit her lip.

Mitch leaned in, his gentle touch stopping, and then disappearing altogether. “ _Yes_.” The sound of his hand hitting her flesh echoed through the room, and was only drowned out by her actual scream. His heart dropped a bit. He hit Willa a little harder than he meant to, getting carried away in the game. “ _Shit_ , baby, are you okay? Was that too hard? I didn-”

She grabbed Mitch’s hand from her jaw and dipped one of his fingers into her mouth, ceasing his talking. His chest tightened, as she sucked on his long digit, and then heard the pop of him leaving her mouth. “I deserved it.” She stayed in character.

“ _Oh god fucking damnit_ , I love you.” Mitch shook his head and kissed her lips before clearing his throat and falling back into his role with ease. “Do you know what this next one is for?” She shook her head, excited to hear what he was punishing her for. “ _This_   _one_ is for speaking without being spoken to.” His large hand smacked against Willa's naked ass cheek again, pulling another scream from her throat. Her flesh was stinging. She wanted more. “Will you do that again?” He asked, picking Willa's face up to look at him, by her jaw, once more.

“Never again.” Willa promised with a grin.

Mitch let out a huff. 

 _She was killing him_. 

“ _This_  one is for wearing these tights. You knew what you were doing when you walked into the office this morning. Do you  _like_  getting your boss turned on first thing in the morning?  _Answer honestly_ , or you’ll only make this worse.”

She bit her lip and nodded. “ _Yes_. I love turning my boss on.”

“ _Good_.” Mitch whispered before spanking you again, this time on your other cheek, but his fingers were so long that they smacked against your already red flesh. Willa yelped, and squirmed against his lap. He rubbed his hand against your tingling skin, soothing you before continuing his assault on your body. “This next one,” Her ears perked up. “is for not telling me you weren’t wearing anything under that tight skirt. I’m supposed to  _know_  when you’re acting like a whore for me.” Willa let out a whimper. His dirty talk was making the throbbing between her legs more intense. 

If anyone could bring a woman to orgasm just by using his words,  _it was Mitch Rapp_ , you were sure of it. 

“How am I supposed to treat you like a slut, if I don’t know that you are one?”

“You can’t.” She answered his question.

“So then what?”

“I deserve to be spanked.” Willa managed to say, flatly, despite the eagerness bubbling up in her throat.

“Yes, you do.”

She screamed louder as two consecutive slaps came down hard across both cheeks. Willa wasn’t expecting the switch up and it excited her even more. A shuddering moan fell from her lips when she felt the cold wet sensation of his teeth gently digging into the burning flesh on her backside.

“ _What color_?” 

“Green.  _Please_ , green.” Willa whispered, clipped and shaky. 

He continued. “ _Such a perfect ass_.” Mitch mumbled, gently rubbing her skin again. His soft touch ceased. “What do you say when I compliment you?” He sounded annoyed, and  _god, did it egg her on_.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Rapp.” Another smack came down hard, and Willa trembled in his lap, gripping the bottom of the couch and his ankle.

This was pleasurable agony.

“Good, I almost forgot what you’re next spanking is for.”

“Oh,  _please_  tell me. I  _so_  want to be good for you.” She begged, panting against the side of his thigh.

“You haven’t been calling me ’ _Mr. Rapp_ ’ or ’ _Sir_ ’, and you know how I don’t like that sort of disrespect.” Three of the hardest blows yet landed one after the other on Willa's raw skin, and she practically came undone. “ _You’re dripping_ … Did the good little slut cum for me?”

“No,  _Sir_. Not yet. I didn’t have your  _permission_.”

Mitch’s breath hitched in the back of his throat. “ _You’re damn fucking right_. Oh, I think you are finally beginning to learn your lesson, Miss Hurley.”

“ _Mr. Rapp_?”

Mitch grinned from ear to ear. “ _Yes_?”

“Can you please make me cum now?” Willa would beg if she had to.

Mitch’s cock twitched in his pants. He wanted that too, but not at the sake of the game. “I don’t think you’ve earned that privilege yet.”

“Oh  _please_ , Mr. Rapp, I’ll do  _anything_.” Willa plead, while rubbing her torso against his clothed thigh, trying so desperately to feel some sort of friction against  _any_  part of her body.

Mitch stayed quiet for a moment, watching her writhe against him. When he finally spoke, the low octave sent a chill straight to Willa's thighs. "Get on your knees.“

She practically jumped at the demand, moving faster than Mitch had ever seen her move before; including times when the two of them were being fired at. The selfish nature of the game that they were playing took over Mitch’s mind and all he could think about was the throbbing, twitching, leaking ache in his pants. 

He stayed in his seated position, relaxing back into the couch cushions and watching her fight to stay still on her knees in front of him, as he undid and pulled down his pants and underwear. His cock slapped against his stomach with an actual  _thud_  and Mitch had to breathe deeply to ignore the feeling of something  _touching_ him, even if that something was the flesh of his own taut stomach. He bit and licked at his bottom lip, chest heaving, as he stared down his prey.

"None of that  _licking_ ,  _teasing_   _bullshit_. Only your mouth.  _Quickly_.” He spurted out his demands in succession and Willa jumped again.

Mitch ground his teeth together when Willa all but drooled on his cock, slobbering and sucking; a loud, moaning mess, cradling the tip against her tongue. 

His hips involuntarily bucked up each time she moaned,  _which was a lot_. He wondered if Willa was enjoying this more than him. 

 _He doubted it, but he wondered nonetheless_.

Her hot and eager tongue swirled around the tip of his dick and Mitch groaned at the way she was alternating between an intensely pressurized sucking and the soft and warm lapping of her familiar tongue. He kind of enjoyed that she was so intensely focused on his pleasure and fulfilling what he had demanded of her, that her eyes were screwed shut; almost as if any other use of Willa's senses would be complete overload for her brain.

But Mitch desired Willa's attention… 

 _No_ , Mitch  _needed_  it. 

He need her eyes and the way that they  _knew_   _him_. 

He  _needed_  them.

“ **Enough**.” He spoke firmly, and just like that, her eyes snapped open, curiously staring up at him, wondering if she had done something to displease him.

She wiped the back of her wrist and hand against her glistening chin and lips, before she spoke. “Was that not good enough? If you just let me use my hands, I  _prom_ -”

“ _Miss Hurley_ ,” Willa's fearful glance quickly turned into a devilish smile when she realized that she was still playing their little game. “you want to keep your job,  _right_?”

“Yes, Mr. Rapp.” She nodded.

“You want to keep coming back here every day to swallow my cum under my desk,  _don’t you_?”

A seemingly never-ending shiver was sent down her body. It put the hair on her arms on edge and perked her nipples up, and she let out a loud huff. 

Again, if  _any man_  could make a person cum  _just by speaking_ , it would be  _Mitch_   _Rapp_. 

She pressed her legs firmly together, stifling the all consuming throbbing that had built up between her thighs, and nodded. Willa would have to make a mental note to do that at his actual office because the idea was mind-numbingly hot. 

“Mr. Rapp, if I could kneel under your desk all day with your cock in my mouth, just warming it and sucking it and licking it and kissing it and swallowing all that it would give me…  _You wouldn’t even have to pay me_.” Her eyes were boring into Mitch’s fully blown out pupils; challenging him and inviting him all at the same time. “I’d happily do that for  _free_ ….” Willa paused, and then her cheekbones turned up. “ _Mr. Rapp_ …” She reiterated and Mitch felt a little spill out of his slit.

“I’m gonna fuck you until you can’t see.” Mitch barely managed to mumble, as he was already scooping her up by the waist, and tossing her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing at all. 

Willa dangled over Mitch’s back, admiring the way that his pants were loosely, barely hanging onto his hips. He had tucked himself back in, but he hadn’t bothered zipping or buttoning back up. All that kept his tight khaki trousers from falling to his ankles, as he ascended the staircase, was his perfectly sculpted ass.

She whined, as she felt her arousal dripping down her thigh.  _This was torture_. Willa  _wanted_  to be fucked until she couldn’t see. 

 _What a pleasant way to go blind_ , she thought. 

The dull tingling on her ass had gone away completely, and all she could feel was his muscular hands gripping her thighs against his collarbone. 

“ _Mitch_..” Willa knew exactly what she was doing.

“ _Are you fucking serious_?” He snapped, stopping in the hallway and letting her drop to her feet. He glanced around, fully prepared to humiliate her by forcing her to bend over and grab her toes while he spanked her for her insubordination, but he eyed the table against the wall instead. “ _Color_.” He demanded, his voice gravely and rough. 

“Fucking green.” Willa huffed. 

“ _Grab the edge_.” He pointed, and she quickly complied. He pushed his hand against the middle of her back, directing her into an  _‘L_ ’ shaped position, with her ass sticking out, waiting to be punished and then pleasured. Her breath was heavy, as he was quiet and predatory, his hand slowly grazing down her body. The hardest hit yet landed and Willa cried out. “How many times will it take until you’ve learned?” Another spank echoed through the sparsely furnished hallway on the second floor, followed by another satisfied yelp and moan from her throat. “Only a perfect little whore gets to call her boss by his first name.”

Two more, and then.. 

 _Fuck it_ , a third. 

Mitch was drinking in the way that Willa's hips bucked up and her back arched down and her groans grew more strained. His hand stung from the impacts and he wondered if he should stop before he hurt her. Her perfect rear was redder than he had ever seen it, blotchy patches scattered across her perfect skin and he swore,  _oh god_ , he swore he could  _almost_  make out his handprint. 

 _That would be glorious if it was true_. 

He honestly couldn’t even help himself, he wasn’t sure what was in charge of his body anymore: his brain or his cock, and another slap came down on her raw ass. Willa's head dropped and she panted; the noises somehow pushing even more blood into Mitch’s member.

“Do you understand, Miss Hurley?”

His breath hitched in the back of his throat when he heard her moan and rub her legs languidly together. “Yes,  _sir_.” She managed to say, though her voice was weak from her cries and screams. Willa was more impressed that she was able to form words at all, since she was pretty sure that her brain had shut down from sheer euphoria after the second or third slap.

“ _Fuck_.” Mitch couldn’t take the way that her legs rubbed and moved anymore, and he pulled at her waist once more.

Willa spun, and Mitch pressed her against the wall, no more than twenty feet from her bedroom door. It was too far for Mitch. 

He couldn’t wait any longer. 

She acted like he had glued her to the wall, watching him strip of his clothing in a flash, before he pressed his body up against hers, smashing her against the wall. Willa hoped that the two of them would leave dents that she could grin over every time she passed by. Mitch attacked her neck with his tongue and lips and teeth and she moaned so loudly that her body shook. He grabbed at her left leg, tucking her thigh against his hip and enjoying the feeling of the spike on her heel digging into his fleshy ass. 

Mitch lined himself up with Willa's entrance and shoved himself in.

Her gasps were loud and synchronized and the moment that Mitch pulled her right leg up, to hook around his waist, then pulled her hands above her head, pinning them against the wall with one lock of his thumb and middle finger, she knew that she would be walking funny the next day. He didn’t allow her time to stretch and adjust, he simply railed into her, huffing and panting and nipping and licking at whatever exposed skin was closest to his mouth.

Mitch’s thrusts were forceful and frenzied, but direct enough that Willa never questioned whether or not he was still in control. “Oh god, Mr. Rapp, I want to cum.  _Please_." 

Her head slumped onto his shoulder, completely overstimulated from the way that Mitch fucked into her tight, wet cunt, and she whined at the way that he didn’t answer her or give her permission to come undone. Soon, Willa wouldn’t be able to hold it off, not with the unrelenting pace that he was setting. She liked the sound of her hair brushing against the plaster of the walls over and over, as her body was continuously pressed up and down the wall.

” _Fuck_.“ Mitch was all but breathless. Willa could read it all over his face. "Are you  _cl_ -”

Her brain let go of it’s vice grip over her orgasm and she felt the world go dark around her. Just Willa and the absolute ecstasy taking over her body. “Holy  ** _fuck_**!" 

She was brought back into reality by the feeling of her throbbing pussy being filled with hot liquid. Willa whimpered and clawed at Mitch’s back, feeling her nails scrape up his sweaty skin. She was sure that she had drawn blood. 

She really didn’t fucking care.

After a few moments, all that could be heard was the two of their off rhythm panting, and then her barely audible coos, as Mitch’s nose grazed back and forth against her sweaty jugular, before he left several soft and tender kisses on her throat and jaw. Her fingers were buried in his damp, shaggy hair and her arms were wrapped around his head, holding him close to her. She was surprised how long Mitch was able to stay in that position after all of the physical work he had just put in.

Eventually, the two of them dropped to the floor and laid holding each other in the hallway, silently, for a long while. "You’re such a good boss.” Willa muttered finally, and Mitch let out a loud laugh.

* * *

“Can I snuggle behind you, baby?” Mitch asked, leaning over the back of the couch, and smiling down at his beautiful girlfriend, watching a Yankees game on the television in the living room.

“ _Umm_..” Willa stumbled for half a second, but it was enough for Mitch to know that something was wrong. He interrupted her before she could finish a coherent thought.

“I know I went too hard.  _Turn over_ , let me see.” Mitch pushed the back of her left shoulder down towards the couch, to lay her flat on her stomach, and pulled down the back of her loose red plaid pajama pants. “ _Holy shit_ , Will. They’ve turned into hand-shaped bruises. Why didn’t you stop me if I was going hard enough to leave a  _bruise_?”

“It felt good at the  _time_..” She muttered, glancing at him hanging over the couch, behind her, slightly embarrassed.

Mitch sighed. “What can I do to make it better?” He asked, with a frown. Willa simply shrugged. “Think if I rub some lotion on it, that might help?”

“ _Maybe_?” She moved his hand and turned back on to her side. “There’s some of that honey-lavender soothing, calming cream crap under the sink in our bathroom.” Mitch nodded and ran upstairs, returning in seconds with a vat of calming lotion in his hand.

“Can we watch this upstairs in bed so I can put this on you?” Mitch asked, and Willa shrugged again, reaching over to shut off the television. Mitch shut off most of the lights and turned to watch her walking towards the staircase. “ ** _You’re even walking funny!_** _Damnit_ , Will. Don’t let me go that hard again.”

Mitch scooped her up and threw you over his shoulder, hooking his arm around the back of her knees. “But it was fun.” Willa whined, as he carried her up the stairs. Mitch rolled his eyes and shook his head, but he was unable to fully fight off his smirk. 

 _She was ridiculous_.

“Get undressed, baby.” Mitch told her, as he took his own shirt and pants off. He tossed the lotion on the bed next to her, and looked for the remote. 

The  _Yankees-Blue Jays_  game began playing on the screen on the wall, and Willa glanced behind her when she felt the mattress dip under Mitch’s weight. He unscrewed the cap to the lotion, dipped his fingers in, and smeared it on her butt. He gently and slowly worked the calming cream into her flesh, hoping it would make the tingling sensation subside. 

“ _Better_?”

“Yeah, actually.” She replied, softly humming as he also rubbed her thighs and back.

“How’s Judge doing?”

“Single homer in the top of the second. He’s killin’ it.” Willa spoke about her favorite new Yankee. A long pause, was followed by her timid voice. “ _Hey, honey_?” She turned so that she was facing him, in all his nearly naked perfection, laying on the bed like  _a damn modern-day Adonis_. He raised his brows and smiled. He liked it when she called him an affectionate pet name. “I know that our discussion earlier  _devolved_  into…. well,  _you having to rub calming lotion onto my bruised ass_ , but I was kind of  _serious_.”

“About what?”

“I’d be really uncomfortable with you getting a pretty, young straight female secretary. I’d even be uncomfortable with a handsome, young gay secretary.” She admitted.

“So straight males, lesbians and old hags only?” Mitch joked, not picking up on how sincere Willa was about this particular topic.

“Mitch…  _I’m serious_." 

Mitch propped himself up on his elbow to look at her a little better. ” _Oh_ …“ He furrowed his brow and tried to think what this could be about. He connected his eyes with Willa's again. "I’d never cheat on you, Y/n/n. You’ve got me so wrapped around your fucking finger.  _You know that_.” Mitch smiled at her, hoping that reminding her of the truth would cheer her up.

“I’m not worried about you cheating.” Willa corrected him, and Mitch’s brows quirked up, causing wrinkles to form on his forehead. “ _That’s good to know though_.” She smiled, and he returned her expression, leaning over to leave a quick kiss against her thigh.

“Why not the young female secretary then? That’s kind of who applies to those postions, right?”

Willa shrugged. “ _I guess_ ,but I don't know, I’m just worried about someone becoming obsessed with you.” Mitch quirked an eyebrow up again, the slightest hint of a smirk beginning to form on his lips. “ _Honestly_ , it was the first thing that popped in my head. You’re young, you’re wealthy, you’re starting a business that will inevitably do well whether by your doing or the CIA’s,  _or both_ … You are just about the most  _gorgeous_  man I have ever actually seen in real life, and you’re all quiet and mysterious.  _I see_  how women look at you on the street… They’d rather walk head on into oncoming traffic than take their eyes off of you.  _You_  are  _obsession-worthy_ , my love, and it makes me nervous.”

“Will..” Mitch began to brush her off.

She propped herself up on her elbows a bit more. “It’s not me being jealous,  _I swear_. I just… I’m worried they’ll get a crush, they’ll become nosy about you, and it’ll turn into nosiness about your business. I don’t want them overstepping their bounds.”

Mitch thought for a moment. “Do you  _really_  think that would happen?”

“I think it  _could_.” He nodded, hearing what she was saying. “Also….. the  _tiniest_  bit jealousy. I don’t want some skinny little asshole being weird and making  _me_  feel uncomfortable every time I show up to your office.”

Mitch snickered and nodded again. “ _Okay_ , no young, female secretary. What you say goes.”

“Do you think I’m being crazy?”

Mitch smiled, shook his head and dipped his fingers back into the vat of lotion, before returning to his duty of making his girlfriend feel better. “No, I think you notice things that I don’t and I think I don’t want any one ever listening in on my phone calls or checking my emails, so I’ll find someone good.”

She simply smiled back at him, pleased with the person she chose to spend her days with, and went back to watching the game.


	44. Day 222

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Willa lets Mitch join her on her annual September 11th tradition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *HEED THESE WARNINGS* long discussions of death, post-traumatic stress, inability to forgive, funerals, burials, cemeteries, September 11th, children’s comprehension of terrorism, mentions of suicide.

Mitch leaned against the the back passenger side door of Porsche, his navy blue sweater and trousers contrasting with the white paint of the car. He stared at Willa, kneeling in the plush green grass in the middle of two black marble gravestones, pulling bouquets of dead flowers out of the planters in the ground.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath. The cooling early September air was a little sharp, but mostly just refreshing to his lungs. 

Mitch thought about how it was nice to be out of New York City. Brooklyn really was a stones throw away from their apartment, but on that day, he was slightly grateful to have Willa out of downtown Manhattan. 

He thought about where he’d bring her after she was ready to leave. If Willa wanted to go home or go about her regular business, he’d respect that and follow her lead, but if she'd let him, Mitch fantasized about taking her away for the day. He thought that few people deserved to shirk all responsibility for a day as much as Willa did on that particular day.

He was lost in thought about how long it would take him to get to one of the wineries on the North Fork of Long Island, when it occurred to him what the backdrop of the Evergreens Cemetery was:  _the Freedom Tower_.

Mitch’s heart sank.

No one was inside of the coffins under the earth that she sat on top of. 

 _No one ever had been_.

From what he knew, Willa's family had lowered three empty caskets into the ground, three weeks after the attacks, when all hope for any recovery had been lost, and she stood there with Stan, Beth, and the rest of the Virginia Hurley’s, watching the life that she knew and loved be covered in shovelfuls of dirt.

He wondered if the Hurley’s had bought burial plots in the Evergreens before their untimely deaths, or if Stan, or some other member of their family, had picked a resting place that overlooked Robert and Jacqueline Hurley’s real resting place:  _Ground Zero_.

He watched the woman he loved carefully. 

Willa was leaning towards one grave more, her hand draped over a top edge, rubbing the smooth stone, back and forth. The way her head bobbed and tilted and the way her shoulders lightly shook and the way her hand gently gestured, Mitch knew that Willa was talking to her parents.

He wondered if he would ever feel any better if he went to the place where his own parents were buried, and sat on the ground in front of their graves and tried to talk to them.

 _He doubted it_.

Some time passed before Mitch noticed Willa staring at him, but not making any efforts to get back to the car. He took it as a cue to approach her, and finally he settled into the ground next to her, not touching, but close enough if she needed him.

Willa smiled softly, her eyes puffy and heavy, but her shoulders relaxed and her expression genuine. She was happy that he was there. 

Mitch felt honored.

He pulled at the bottom of his dark blue sweater, succumbing to the strange need to look presentable in that very moment, he then brushed a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead some, and stroked his beard, pushing all the straggly hairs back into place. He glanced up at her, her hand resting gently on the top of the middle gravestone, and shoved his hands in his pockets.

It had been years since he had been to a cemetery, and frankly, he was certain he had been to far too many of them for his age.

First, it was his grandfather when he was five.

Next, both of his mother’s parents died within a three week span of each other when he was eight. His grandmother went first and his grandfather lost the will to go on without his beloved and he died in his sleep shortly thereafter.

He thought that that would be the end of it for a long while. Old people were supposed to die. Grandparents were supposed to die.

 _Parents_   _weren’t_ , at least not for a long while.

But then Mitch turned fourteen and his parents went on a business trip to Tunisia, and one reckless taxi driver changed his entire concept of the world. Hundreds of people showed up to the cemetery for their burials, but Mitch had never felt more alone.

He’d never felt more alone until Katrina’s burial. That day was what put him in the true depths of loneliness.

Watching her mahogany casket be lowered into the freshly dug dirt was a sight that he still occasionally saw in his nightmares.

Mitch’s final grandparent died seven months after Katrina did. He didn’t go to the wake or the funeral or the burial. It wasn’t that he didn’t care or didn’t love his grandmother, it was simply that he could not do it. There was nothing that was going to make Mitch step foot in a cemetery ever again, or at least, he thought there was nothing.

But then he met Willa, and his entire concept of the world changed again.

And here he was, yet again, in a cemetery, feeling lonely and distraught, bouts of post-traumatic stress bubbling up in his throat like vomit.

Until Willa turned and smiled somberly at him.

His heart surged in his chest.

_He wasn’t alone._

He would never be alone again as long as he kept her safe and as long as he kept her in love with him. He had never felt so  _not alone_ in his entire life, and he remembered that he was in a cemetery again, for the first time in what felt like forever, so that Willa would not feel alone either.

The two of them had each other, and that was always going to be more than enough.

Mitch pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them against his thighs nervously. “What do you usually do when you’re here?”

Willa shrugged her shoulders gently, and looked around at the other headstones surrounding them both, before she looked back up at Mitch’s chocolate brown eyes. Her hand was still resting on top of the middle grave when she spoke quietly. “Usually I grab a blanket and lay it out and I just sit on it and talk to them for a few hours.”

Mitch thought about where the blanket was and a small alarm went off in his head. “I’ll get the blanket out of the trunk. Be right back.” He shouted behind him as he ran off towards the car.

Willa cocked her head to the side and couldn’t help the smirk that settled onto her mouth. “He’s usually much cooler than this.” She murmured, as she stroked the rough top of the marble. “Guess he’s just nervous about meeting the parents.”

She grinned heartily, as Mitch jogged back with the red tartan blanket in hand and his hair suddenly windblown from his quick sprint. “Just lay it out right here?” Willa nodded, but Mitch hesitated, looking weary. “ _On top of them_?”

“They won’t mind, I promise.” Willa replied, not even trying to hide the smirk anymore.

“Alright then.” Mitch unfurled the blanket and shook it out until it laid nice and flat over the green grass in front of the three headstones.

Willa left her boots at the end of the blanket, closest to the marble markers, and sat down gracefully towards the middle of the large blanket that usually lived in the trunk of Mitch’s Porsche. Mitch sat down next to her, crossing one ankle over the other in front of him, and resting his right hand behind her back. She turned to look at the handsome man that she had spent the past six months with and leaned her head against the boney tip of his shoulder.

“Thanks for coming with me.”

Mitch pressed a firm kiss onto the top of her head and stayed long after his lips had departed, nuzzling his sweet upturned nose into her perpetually vanilla scented hair. “Anytime, baby.” He whispered finally. 

Willa sighed happily and straightened back up. Mitch leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss against the back of her bicep, then looked up at her. 

She looked lost, staring at something ahead of her. He couldn’t be certain if it was the Manhattan skyline in the distance or the expanse of gravestones unfurling before her in perfectly straight lines, or if she was just looking vacantly at the few headstones staring back at her. 

Mitch wanted Willa back on the blanket with him, so he spoke quietly. “What do you usually talk to them about?”

Her head turned back towards him slowly, a soft curve complimented her lips. Willa shrugged. “Anything…” She paused and looked at the middle grave again. “ _Everything_ … I tell them what’s happening in my life. Tell them about school or work or The Barn.” She turned back to Mitch with a more substantial grin. “I told them about you last time I was here, in the Spring.”

Mitch smiled back and looked down at her hand, near his, bashfully. “Good things, I hope.”

Willa nodded, before gracefully collapsing backwards onto the blanket. She closed her eyes and let the smile stay on her mouth. “I told them that you saved me from getting hurt and that you were kind to me and that everything that my mom ever said about my father’s thoughtfulness and intelligence, I felt about you.”

Mitch leaned back, propping himself on one elbow, as he reclined next to her on the blanket. He stretched across the space between the two of them and left a small kiss on her cheek. “I love you, Will.” He whispered, in her ear before turning away.

Willa turned her head, letting her eyes focus on his beautiful face, and she beamed. “I love you too.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and turned her face back towards the sky. “They would’ve loved you too. Maybe would’ve thought you were a little serious, but I suppose they probably would’ve thought the same about me nowadays, as well.”

Mitch stroked his free hand up and down the inside of her wrist. This was the opening he’d been waiting for. 

One of the missing pieces that made up Willa's soul. He didn’t know all of her, not even close, but this part that she kept so close to her chest was one more way for him to attempt to understand everything that made up the woman that he loved. “You don’t talk about them much.” Willa hummed in agreement. “Wanna tell me about them?”

She opened her eyes once more, turned onto her side, smoothing down the skirt of her dress so that she was modestly covered, and nodded softly. “What’dyou know?”

Mitch shrugged one shoulder, and jutted his chin out towards the graves. “Their names, where they worked, that your dad used to collect cars and first edition books.. I know all that, but, I don’t know. You don’t talk about them much, and I never wanted to pry and upset you.”

Willa smiled up at Mitch, rubbing her fingers in small circles against the soft cashmere of his navy blue sweater. “Everyone called them Bobby and Jackie.”

Mitch smirked. “Very Kennedy’s of them.”

She snickered and nodded. “I know. Um, my mom grew up in the city, in our apartment, and my Dad grew up in a town called Sands Point, on Long Island. They were both pretty privileged and wealthy and smart, and they both went to Princeton, but they met in the Peacecorps.”

Mitch quirked his eyebrows up. “They were in the Peacecorps?”

Willa nodded. "Met in Guatemala and fell crazy in love with each other.”

Mitch let the sides of his mouth twitch up. He knew something about being crazy in love with someone. He squeezed at Willa's hip and held her close, listening as she continued.

“I just remember them as my parents. They bickered like married couples do, but they were best friends. They did everything together and with my brother and I. My mom would always play Barbie’s with me and taught me how to ride a bike and my dad always read me books before bed and brought me to my first baseball game.”

“They sound like good parents.”

Willa nodded, her nose brushing against Mitch’s chest, up and down, up and down, up and down, in rhythm with her movements. “Stan and Meredith and some old colleagues that I’ve met through the years have told me what they were like as people, outside of just being my mom and dad, but my favorite stories about them always come from Perry.”

“The guy that runs the garage at the apartment?” Mitch asked, confusion evident in his voice.

Willa nodded again. “Yeah, I mean, you knew that I’ve known him since I was a little kid.”

Mitch rubbed his hand up and down her side. “I assumed, but I didn’t know for sure.”

She finally looked up at Mitch again. “I think he was, like, seventeen or something when the World Trade Center opened in the late seventies, and he started working there after school as a janitor. Eventually, he got a job as a security officer in the main lobby. Had you ever been to the Twin Towers?”

Mitch nodded. “My dad took Steve and I on a trip to the city one year for a Knicks-Wizards game at Madison Square Garden, and we did all the touristy stuff, including going to the Observation Deck of the World Trade Center.”

“So you remember that massive white lobby with the huge escalators and all of the world flags and stuff?” Willa asked.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Well, Perry worked there, for like fifteen years, before he met my parents.” She began tracing nonsensical circles on Mitch’s abdomen, as a means to distract herself from a topic that generally caused Willa a good deal of pain. “You knew that my parents were executives for Cantor Fitzgerald, so they were just very powerful people, but they were still kind, you know?”

Mitch hummed in agreement, letting her know he was still engaged in her story.

“I guess, most of the hot shot executives that worked in the building could not be bothered to be kind to the people who worked security or helped to keep the towers up and running, but Perry always said that my Dad wasn’t like that. One day, after like a long weekend in the summer, my Dad was coming in early and Perry struck up a conversation about the weather with him, and weather turned into sports, sports turned into politics, politics turned into family, and by the end of the summer, Perry said the highlight of his day was getting to see and chat with my parents.”

Mitch couldn’t help but think about the ways in which he had seen Willa quickly get into deep conversations with mere strangers. Generally, everyone loved her because she was so friendly. He figured that was a shared family trait.

Willa continued. “My mom and dad would tell Perry about Brandon and me, and Perry would talk about his wife, Linda, and his three kids, and they became pretty good friends, you know what I mean?”

Mitch nodded and smiled softly. “I get you.”

She smiled in return, then took a deep exhale. “They were all there for the bombing of the towers in ‘93, and Perry got sort of hurt. Some shrapnel in his foot, I don’t know, I don’t tend to ask him to elaborate on that part of the story just cause I was barely alive enough to remember it.” Willa explained. “My parents went down immediately when they felt the building shake with the explosion, and ended up in the thick of the mayhem, but my mom left and got my brother and I from day care and school, and my dad went to the hospital with Perry.”

“He sounds like he was really kind.” Mitch finally spoke up.

Willa let her fingers drift up to Mitch’s collar, fixing the crisp white button down hiding underneath his sweater. “Perry always says that my parents were known for their kindness and generosity above all else, which is always nice to hear.”

“Reminds me of you.” Mitch mentioned, stroking his fingers against her cheek.

She smiled softly, before turning her head to kiss at the palm of Mitch’s hand. Willa sighed and shook her head, embarrassed by his compliment. “I guess a few years after the bombing, Linda, Perry’s wife, was diagnosed with breast cancer. It metastasized and went to her stomach, and it was just months and months and months of chemo and surgery and Perry working double shifts in order to keep up with the medical expenses.”

“Shit.” Mitch murmured.

“There were times, even, when Perry and Linda’s kids, Charlie, Jamal and Natalie, stayed the night at our apartment because they had no one to look after them.” She grimaced and shook your head. “After almost a year of Linda suffering with her health, Perry’s health benefits ran out. They hit their max, and they were kind of screwed.”

“Oh fuck.”

Willa shut your eyes. “I didn’t know this was how Perry came to start working here until a few years ago, but I guess my Dad asked how Linda was doing one night because my Mom had brought dinner over to their house again and, I guess she knew something was going on, but Perry told my Dad that he was going to have to take Linda home because he couldn’t afford to continue her treatment, and my Dad quietly went home, talked to my Mom, went to the hospital the next day and paid off all of Linda’s outstanding medical bills.”

“Holy shit.” Mitch whispered, breathily and surprised.

Willa popped her eyes open and glanced over. Mitch was completely focused on her face. She reached up and stroked his cheek. “My Mom switched all of the benefits for the employees of the building, got them better retirement and health insurance, and then my Dad convinced Perry to quit working at the Trade Center, and he’s been working down in the garage ever since for like double the pay of what he was getting there.”

Mitch shook his head. “Your parents essentially saved Perry’s wife’s life.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, and they never even discussed it. Perry told me that the only time he and my father talked about it, my Dad said ’ _You and Linda are family, and Jackie and I take care of our family._ ’” Willa took a deep breath in and as subtly as possible, brought her hand up to wipe a rogue tear off her cheek. She tried to move on quickly, not wanting to dwell on her momentary weakness. “Perry, Linda and the kids would always invite us over for Christmas Eve every year, and we used to do dinner with them every so often.” Willa shook her head and finally glanced back at Mitch. “They always taught us, through example, that you would always gain so much more than you would ever lose when you were just kind to people.”

Mitch leaned down and planted a soft kiss on Willa's forehead. “They’d be proud of you. You’re kind and you’re brave and the smartest person I know.”

Willa nuzzled her face back into his chest. “They would’ve liked you.”

“Think they would’ve been happy you picked me?” Mitch asked, whispering into her ear, as he stroked his fingers through her hair.

She hummed quietly. “I think they would’ve thought you were sweet and smart and that I was always going to be safe with you. Sometimes, I imagine what Christmases and birthdays would’ve been like with them there and you there.”

“Don’t think about what it would’ve been like if Brandon were still here too?” Mitch asked, quiet and hesitant to push a button that the both of them had been outrightly avoiding since Rome.

Willa was quiet for a few moments. “Can’t say I think about it.” She mumbled.

Mitch didn’t say anything in return. He simply held on to her and continued running his fingers through her hair.

After several minutes of silence, she turned on to her back. “I think I’m ready to get out of here.”

Mitch nodded once and began to get up. “I’ll go grab the flowers from the car.”

Willa bunched the blanket up in her arms and passed it off to Mitch. She smiled, solemnly. “Thanks, M.”

He took a step forward, wrapped his long fingers around the back of her head, and pressed a solid kiss against her forehead. “Anything for you.” He whispered, as he pushed his forehead against hers.

Mitch turned around and walked off towards the car. 

He took his time shaking out the blanket and folding it, watching Willa out of his periphery, giving her a few extra moments to say goodbye to her family before he interrupted her again. Mitch pulled the two bouquets of calla lilies, that she had bought, out of the backseat, went towards the trunk, but then balked. He locked the car and walked towards her, handing her the flowers.

He watched as Willa placed each bouquet in the stone vases, planted in the dirt, in front of her mom and dad’s headstones. She let her fingers drag over each of their names, before she rose to her feet again. Mitch swallowed thickly, then spoke. “You didn’t bring anything for Brandon?”

Willa noticeably flinched at the name. She shook her head. “Didn’t  _feel_ …” She paused, glancing down at her boots. “Just didn’t feel right this year.”

Mitch furrowed his brow and whispered. “ _Ghost_  wasn’t your brother. That man in Rome wasn’t him. The person you buried  _here_ ,” He pointed to the grave to the right of Jackie’s, the elephant in the room for most of the afternoon. “when you were nine,  _that_  was Brandon.”

Willa suddenly began avoiding eye contact with Mitch. He felt his heart sink. “I’ve tried to remember that.” She shook her head and stared off into the distance, at the city’s skyline, on the foggy, gray day. “I really have  _tried_ , but..” Willa trailed off, but just as Mitch was about to try to say something, she spoke up again. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him.”

Mitch reached out, barely brushing his fingers against the chunky white material of her cardigan. “You will. I know you will.”

Willa said nothing for a few moments, not acknowledging Mitch’s words or his touch. Finally, she turned her back towards the graves, reached into Mitch’s hand for the keys, and began to walk to the car. “We should go.”

Mitch watched Willa walk towards the Porsche and sighed. 

He looked at the three graves. Shiny, black marble headstones engraved with beautiful lettering and dates that told a story of three lives cut short on a truly tragic day. 

His heart sunk for the boy that Brandon was, at one point, in Willa's life, and how, now, his grave sat bare, with no flowers, and no sign of anyone who ever cared about him.

Mitch knew deep down, a part of Willa still did.

He walked back to the car, opened the driver’s side door, and popped the trunk.

“What are you doing?” She asked, before Mitch pulled the flowers he had bought early that morning, out of the trunk and closed the hatchback gate.

He heard the passenger side window roll down, as he walked back towards the graves with a bouquet of peonies in hand. He tried not to think about how angry she possibly was in that moment. He tried to push the potential arguments that would come from this simple act of decency towards a boy he truly didn’t know. He simply thought that it was something that Brandon, Willa and her family deserved.

Halfway back to the car, Mitch heard the motor of the window whirring, and when he finally looked up, he could see her staring straight ahead, through the windshield. He got in the car, turned the ignition over, and pulled out of the cemetery in silence.

The silence hung for all five exits of the Jackie Robinson Highway.

Once Mitch merged onto the Grand Central Parkway, headed back towards the city, did Willa finally speak. Her voice was pensive and low, and it made the hair on the back of Mitch’s neck stand up. “I don’t even remember the last time I actually saw him.”

Mitch glanced to his right, and saw her staring blankly out the passenger side window. “I guess you never really realize that it’s going to be the last time you see someone, so it’s hard to remember when the last time was.”

“I know what you mean.” Mitch mumbled, trying to split his gaze between his love and the road.

Willa sighed. “I remember the sky that day.” She paused, rolling her lips back into her mouth for a moment. “It was the  _most_   _stunning_ shade of cloudless, clear blue that I have ever seen, to this day.” She shook her head. “That’s what made the smoke so disturbing. It blackened the sky in contrast and you could see it from wherever you were in the city. It didn’t matter how far away you were. You could see the smoke from everywhere.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Mitch replied, for lack of anything more comforting to say.

Willa finally looked over at Mitch and nodded. Her hand slowly drifted to rest on top of his, over the gear shift. Mitch tried not to audibly sigh in relief. “I also remember how dark my apartment was when I got home. School let out early, which frankly, was probably a mistake on the administrations part in retrospect, but that’s what happened, and they sent us all home. I remember how incredibly dark my apartment seemed, which, looking back, it probably wasn’t. We never drew our curtains. The apartment probably just felt empty and dark.”

Mitch nodded, and watched Willa furrow her brow, as the two of them sat in standstill traffic in the Midtown Tunnel.

“I didn’t get what was going on until the televisions started working again, which, I don’t know if you remember but the main TV broadcasting antenna for the tri-state area was on top of Tower One, and when the building went down, so did the TV and radio signal.”

Mitch nodded. “Yeah, I remember that being a thing.”

Willa bobbed her head side to side for a moment. “Well, when the TV’s went back on and I saw the  _news_ …” She trailed off again. “I really didn’t fully understand it. I was too young to wrap my head around it all.”

“I remember not really getting it either.” Mitch empathized.

She intertwined her fingers in between Mitch’s. “I remember we had this landline in the kitchen, and it had one of those spiraling cords, but it was long. I remember fielding all of these phone calls from friends and family from all over the world who knew, they all definitely knew that my parents were dead. I remember Aunt Meredith calling and saying to stay put because Uncle Stan was on the way up to get me.” Willa stopped talking and cleared her throat.

Mitch remembered that part of the story. Stan had managed to get into the city pretty quickly considering what had occurred, but instead of going straight to her, alone in her family’s apartment, he and Aiden Breen found Brandon in the Bowery, high on drugs and scared out of his mind, and Aiden smuggled the young teen out of the city.

Mitch simply squeezed at her fingers, and inched the car forward through the traffic.

Willa was quiet for a few more minutes, until she said something that truly made Mitch’s hair stand straight on his arms and neck. “I watched footage later in high school, once YouTube got big and that shit was readily available.” She took a deep breath out. “I watched the bodies jumping and falling through the sky, just people jumping out of one-hundred and ten story tall buildings because they couldn’t fathom burning to death.” Willa looked out the window. “I always wondered if any of those people who jumped were my parents.” Then Mitch heard the way the tears caught in her throat. “Were they burning?” She looked down and shook her head. “It’s a question I’ll never be able to answer and I will never be able to forget.”

“Will..” Mitch took her hand off the gear shift and settled it in his lap. 

He knew he couldn’t say anything. He knew that his experiences were traumatic as well, almost equally, but no one had ever said anything to him that made his parents’ sudden and violent death better or less painful, so he had nothing that could truly comfort her either.

Willa composed herself. Her voice was still somber and quiet, as the two of them finally emerged from the dark tunnel and light poured in through each window of the car. “Thank you for bringing the flowers for Brandon.”

Mitch glanced over and smiled halfheartedly. “You’re welcome.”

Willa forced a smile back. “I’m not a big enough person yet to get back to thinking of Brandon as a victim and as the boy that I knew as my brother.”

Mitch brought her fingers up to his lips. He pressed kisses to her knuckles. “You’ll get there again one day.”

Willa nodded and looked back out the passenger side window.

As the car pulled onto the FDR Drive, she turned back to Mitch and smiled the most genuine smile she had given him all day. “I’m lucky to have you.”

Mitch let one side of his mouth twitch up, but the way his chest filled with pure, unadulterated devotion for Willa overwhelmed the rest of him. “Nah, I’m the lucky one.”

She pulled his hand up to her lips and kissed her way down one of the prominent veins down to the back of his wrist. “I love you.”

His heart liquified for the woman sitting next to him. “I love you, Will.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i began writing this on September 11th, 2017. it was sort of therapeutic for me. this chapter was terribly personal, i imagine that’s why it was so hard to write. parts of reader’s recollections of that fateful day are my own. i cried and pained over this chapter, but it was important to me that it was done. this is a day that so thoroughly shaped New York, America, the world, and most importantly to this story, the reader. I wanted to give you all and Mitch some greater insight into the reader’s family and her past and how she has been progressing in terms of the things that her family has been through.


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